New RSS Aggregator

January 23, 2004

Oh I thought I should mention, I have been using a new aggregator for about the last month now, IntraVNews, which runs inside Outlook.

It is very handy having RSS inside of outlook, though theres a number of limitations that I have found with outlooks standard display of items that I don’t like. Unfortunately these can’t be changed.

  1. When I used to use SharpReader I would select a folder somewhere in my hierarchy and read all unread messages for that branch of my tree. Can’t be done in Outlook.
  2. The space bar in SharpReader moves between unread items, and moves between feeds when unread items in the current feed have been exhausted. This behaviour is totally different in Outlook.
  3. Memory. I figured the one thing that I would gain by putting all my feeds into Outlook was to curb SharpReader’s horrendous memory usage. Outlook is now using almost 60mb of RAM.
  4. When my folder tree is collapsed in Outlook I can’t see which branches contained unread items, or how many unread items.

I have a feeling that standalone aggregators will eventually clearly distinguish themselves as a force to be rekoned with, however for the moment despite the reasons not to use an Outlook embedded aggregator, the convenience wins out and I will be sticking with IntraVNews.

[iTunes: See The Sun - Dido - Life For Rent (10:35)]