The crew over at Brighthand.com have posted a review of the Cingular 8125 Pocket PC Phone. A varient of the HTC Wizard, its comparable to the T-Mobile MDA and iMate K-JAM.
For you new (or potential) Cingular 8125 owners – don’t hesitate to check out the HTC Wizard Web community site. You’ll find a lot of useful tips, tricks, registry hacks, etc… lots of fun.
I have to admit that NewsAlloy is my current favorite of the free online news aggregators. It has many of the features that a true RSS junkie needs to manage their feeds, and enjoy reading. Its probably the most advanced news reader of all the free online offerings that I’ll review.
Primer
As I’ve done before, here are some links in case you would like to read up on what RSS, ATOM, Web Feeds, OPML, and news aggregators are.
Features
This is what seperates NewsAlloy from the rest. It truely is a real news aggregator, with all the trimmings. Feed management, archiving, rating of feeds, favorites, simple exporting of OMPL, and extensive account settings to manage the views, archiving, tags, actions and more. NewsAlloy really does compare with a stand-alone product offering, but is a fantastic value, especially when you consider that their is no software to install, and is browser independent. It works flawlessly in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, so bring your favorite browser!
Interface
(IMAGE) This is one item that I have not elaborated on in my reviews for NewsGator Online and Attensa Online, mainly because there was not much to talk about. The list of feeds were on the left, the reading pane on the right, simple as that. You click, you read.
NewsAlloy, however, is different in that there is much more to the interface. Yes, the two-pane layout is the same as the others, but because of the feature set, you have more items and controls in the interface. The interface makes full use of the AJAX techniques that have come to infuse all “Web 2.0” sites. On the left, you have the Folders & Shortcuts area that gives you one-click access to multiple “Folders” including Inbox, Archive, Trash, Pinned, Rated, All, and Unread. These shortcuts simplify getting to the major portions of NewsAlloy.
Below Folders & Shortcuts, there is the Channels area, which is actually where you organize your feeds. Consider “channels” folders, and you’ll get the idea. You can have subchannels of channels, so you can organize a “News” channel with specific subchannels for “Politics”, “Sports”, “Technology” and so on. Or start with a top-level channel for “Blogs” and subchannels for “Friends”, “A-Listers” and so on. There is also a toolbar for this section that allows you, with one click, to (from left to right): Export selection as OPML, Create a new Channel, Move selected Channels, Delete selected Channels, Reload Channels Pane, and Reset the selection.
In the viewing pane, you can manipulate the individual posts of a feed. On the right-hand side of the screen, within easy reach, are tools for selecting, expanding, moving, deleting, pinning, subscribing, mailing and exporting. The text, backgound and layout of the actual post is easy to read and allows for quick scanning of the text. The font is easy on the eyes, and does not induce strain – at least for me. Pictures within posts are rendered in their proper places, and the overall post presentation is quite nice.
At the top of the viewing pane, there are 6 tabs that allow you to quickly navigate to the different settings and tools withing NewsAlloy. These tabs are for News (the default), Manage, Settings, My Account, Feedback, and Feed Directory. Overall, its laid out fairly well, everything can be found in a few clicks.
Performance
For me, NewsAlloy has had great performance with some annoyances – though remember it is still in beta. I have had some issues with the service, performance was horrid when I loaded it up with over 100 feeds and didn’t read anything for about two weeks. When I came back, I had around 3300 posts that needed to be dealt with. But I was negligent in managing my read/unread feeds/posts and so my account quickly had so many posts, that it took several seconds to process a read, move, or delete command. With this in mind, I took several minutes about a week ago and cleaned out a number of extraneous feeds and posts, marked them all read, and simply deleted them, as I had already read them in another aggregator. Since then, I’ve noticed what I originally saw in NewsAlloy, a speedy quick news reader with a lot of features.
Usability
The interface of NewsAlloy does take a bit to get used to, it is more advanced than other freebie online news readers. The layout is familiar and the features you need are all there – and all right on the screen. This doesn’t make it cluttered, but it does take awhile to learn what each icon is for, and how to use them. So, usability is not “bad”, it just is hindered slightly by need to pack stand-alone functionality into a web page. I’d say NewsAlloy has done a rather good job of this, though I’m betting that they are going to continue to improve the interface as this product progresses through its beta.
Summary
NewsAlloy is my favorite online reader – no two ways about it. I’m going to continue to keep this account long after I’ve shut down the other online readers, simply because it is much more powerful then the competition, and is quite fast. My daily aggregator is actually Pluck for Internet Explorer, which I’ll talk about another day, but I could see myself switching to NewsAlloy for simplicities sake.
Technorati tags: news-aggregators, newsalloy, rss-reader
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Overview
Attensa Online is a free basic RSS reader, available via both Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers. Similar to NewsGator, Attensa has products for purchase that fill a more feature-packed roll as News Readers. Attensa for Outlook ties into Microsoft Outlook similar to NewsGator Inbox, and Attensa Mobile (available soon) is targeted to mobile device users. The free Attensa Online product also plays a role in the other product offerings, mainly as a central synchronization tool, so you can access your feeds from anywhere.
Accessing news from anywhere has always been a useful part of the Internet experience. And Attensa Online answers that need in full with a simple, easy to use, speedy news reader. Attensa can be accessed from anywhere via browser, using a nice AJAX interface that makes reading your feeds quick and simple.
Primer
Before we get too far into this review, here are some links to read up on what RSS, ATOM, Web Feeds, OPML, and news aggregators are.
Features
The main attraction of Attensa is the simplicity of the interface. The list of feeds are on the left, while the scrollable reading pane is on the right. I was impressed with the ability to scroll the reading pane while the feed list remained stationary on the left. NewsGator Online does not have this ability, and you will enjoy not having to scroll back to the top of the page to move to your next feed. In addition, you can adjust the reading pane using three different view types. One displays the feed contents in a one-line-per-post view that makes efficient use of space, the second option shows two lines of the body of each post in a list view. Both of these view options use the upper-half of the reading pane for the list, and use the bottom half as a viewing pane – there are options to turn this off/on. The third (and my choice) shows three lines of the body text of each post, and allows for more space in the view list. The bottom viewing pane is not available in this view and each click of a feed’s post opens a new browser window (or tab) that displays the full post at the respective website.
There are the standard tools which allow you to mark posts/feeds as read, delete them, import new feeds via OPML, or add them manually. Again, there is no method for exporting your list of feeds once you’ve set them up. You can manage the feeds, by folder or category, but little else.
Usability
The simplicity of the AJAX implementation here is great, because all commands are available via a right-click on a feed or folder. It is quite intuitive to right-click and “mark all read/unread”, or to delete the feeds/folders. Performance was snappy in both Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 1.5 with very little hesitation between feed loads.
Summary
The casual or “newbie” RSS consumer will appreciate the simplicity and easy to read layout of Attensa online. Similar to NewsGator Online, seasoned RSS users would probably pass on the service as it simply does not offer any compelling functionality to match more mature feature-rich news aggregators.
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So I’ve had the T-Mobile MDA for about a month now and can give a good user-review of what I think. I must confess up-front that I’m fond of Windows Mobile, T-Mobile and HTC-built devices, so I’ll do my best to be objective. 🙂
Ultimate Device?
My purchase of the MDA has been a long story of wishing and waiting. My wife has put up with my writing feature wish list items with patient amusement. Muddling through delays, and finally the delivery of my *perfect* device. My requirements for a converged device have been met by the MDA. Period.
Battery/Power
Right out of the box I was not impressed with the battery performance. As with all Li-ion rechargeable batteries (this one is a Sanyo 3.7V 1250mAh Li-ion), it needs a few charge/discharge cycles to really get to full capacity. The first few days, I barely made it without a recharge. Two weeks later, I’ve made it through two days in a row with out a charge – twice. Now keep in mind that I’m checking 5 email accounts every 15 minutes, and have SBSH Pocket Weather updating current conditions every 15 minutes, and 14 bitmap images every 30 minutes. I use the phone portion of the device around 30 minutes a day.
Syncing
ActiveSync 4.1 (AS4) is a great improvement over previous versions, and I’ve had no problems with it synchronizing my data. Now with that said, I must point out that the change in how AS4 connects over USB does have an impact on syncing when you have a personal firewall. Microsoft has published an ActiveSync connection troubleshooting guide that can help you out if your personal firewall software is blocking the sync traffic.
Performance
Hmm, this is a mixed bag for the MDA. Personally, I have issues with the performance, coming from an iPaq h4155 that had a 400MHz processor, I notice a drastic difference. My usage is different than most however. My device runs 5 Today screen plug ins round the clock, along with a task switcher, and email client (see the list below). All this (along with a nice spiffy skin & theme), slow the device considerably. Without this added software, it actually performs quite well! The slower processor is of course much easier on the battery. My wish would have been to have at least a 312MHz processor in the device and a slightly larger battery – but that would just be nit-picking, I’m very comfortable with the performance.
Wireless
The wireless functions of this device are exceptional. Yes T-Mobile only has GPRS/EDGE services, but I’ll have to tell you, coming from a 42K (maximum) connect speed on my Nokia 6600 (using GPRS) to the MDA’s EDGE speeds is a wonderful experience. I’ve actually hit 200kbps, and regular checks every few days in different locations have been in the 128kpbs to 170kbps range – very acceptable for my usage pattern. Your mileage and usage patterns may vary – but I hooked on the EDGE service alone. Just make sure to get an all-you-can-eat data plan!
Bluetooth occasionally gets a workout with syncing the device, and when taking notes on my ThinkOutside Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse combination. This has to be the ultimate mobile office as far as I’m concerned. I can get on the ‘net, do my email and take notes all with pocketable devices. Fantastic!
WiFi is, as you would guess, a great thing to have on the device. I’ve not used WiFi very much on this device because EDGE service in my area is THAT GOOD, it completely eliminates my need to get to a hotspot.
Graphics
Actually, I’ve not much to say on the graphics of the device. They perform adequately enough that I never gave it much thought. While the MDA does not have a dedicated graphics chip, it works very well for me. I’m easy to please in this area since I don’t play any games, and really only push the device while watching video (which is streamed from my home PC via Orb).
One-Handed Useability
Out of the box, one-handed usability suffered as all PPC Phones have little in the way of simplicity like a phone does. Remember, PPC is a general-purpose computing device, capable of Audio, Video, Games, Personal Information Management, Web Browsing, News Reading, Email, Instant Messaging… the list goes on. With that being the case, the MDA (and all its cousins) need a little help in this department.
This is where I turned to the use of a program launcher on the Today screen. My choice (long ago) was iLauncher by SBSH software. With a Today screen program launcher, you can easily have a whole list of applications in icon form that you simply tap with your thumb. This makes it easy to switch apps, and start new ones.
In addition to the program launcher, I highly recommend remapping the physical buttons on the device. Two are all that is really needed. Since you can put a link to email and the browser on the today screen with a program launcher, you can remap the Mail button (upper left) to open the Start Menu (also in the upper left corner), neat huh? The other one I immediately remapped was the Internet Explorer button in the upper right corner. Since the “OK” button is in the upper right corner of the screen, this seemed appropriate to map here. Those two button re-assignments bring a whole new level of usefulness to the device. Even if you didn’t have a program launcher on the Today screen – the shortcuts are right on the Start Menu anyway.
More can be done in this area, but it really boils down to personal preference and working with the device to see what you like. Google a bit on MDA, Wizard, Prodigy, Qtek 9100, iMate KJAM, and 8125. These will turn up endless amounts o f customization options, tweaks, and ideas for you.
Durability
I’m surprised by the durability of the device, yet I keep wondering when the sliding keyboard will not “catch” any longer and simply slide in and out in my pocket. Yes I simply put the device in my pocket instead of a case on my belt. I just don’t like cases that make it harder to get to my device, and I’ve often knocked many lesser mobile phones off my belt onto… pavement and other hard surfaces. So, I’m rather careful with my devices in recent years.
My Customizations
Here is what I’ve done with my MDA. While I own much more software, I’ve been rather selective on what got installed. My main goal with software on this device was to augment its mediocre one-handed operation. I also installed software that I found useful, so here is the list of currently installed software:
Summary
This device is exactly what I’ve been waiting 4 years for. Ever since the first announcements of Smartphone and Pocket PC Phones, I have wished for a pocketable, powerful, all in one device. The MDA is that device. Sure, there are faster processors out there, VGA screens, and EVDO or HSDPA “wireless broadband”. But I’ve got the device I’ve been waiting for – you should check it out to see if it would work for you!
Technorati tags: activesync, htc-wizard, ilauncher, pocketbreeze, pocketweather, sbsh-software, t-mobile-mda, thinkoutside, windows-mobile-5, wisbar-advance
Reviews Intro:
Now I mentioned NewsGator to a coworker awhile ago and the first question they couldn’t wait to ask is “You mean that spy ware company?”. Of course NewsGator has nothing to do with the old “Gator” spy ware stuff from many years ago, but it’s curious that people still relate the name.
At any rate, this review is one in a number (not sure how many) on free RSS Readers. There will be some online products, some offline products, and some that cross the line using features of both. Along with NewsGator Online, I’m planning on reviewing NewsAlloy, Pluck, Attensa, and as many other free news readers that I can in the next few weeks. At work, I’ve got a chance at a large team meeting at the end of April to present the virtues of news readers, and I figured I’d share that information here.
Primer
Here are some links to read up on what RSS, ATOM, Web Feeds, OPML, and news aggregators are.
About NewsGator
NewsGator has a number of feed reader products – NewsGator Online, NewsGator Inbox & FeedDemon for Windows and NetNewsWire for Macintosh. NewsGator Online is a “Web 2.0” product that uses some AJAX features in its interface. The design is similar to other online news readers where your list of feeds is on the left and the content on the right. It does not use panes or any kind of scrolling system, so your feed list on the left will move up as you scroll down in the post list of the feed.
Features
Since the product is online, you don’t need to download and install any software, set any proxy or port information, or use your bandwidth for synchronizing data. In addition, you can use the online account to sync your feeds with one of the previously mentioned “pay for” software choices above. I’ve got a coworker who uses the NewsGator Inbox and is very satisfied with it. You can import your feeds into the system and start reading right away. While the free web version does not allow you to change the update frequency of the newsfeed, the standard sync frequency seems to work fine for the average reader, however, hardcore RSS junkies will miss being in control of synchronization times.
In each post section, there are three little icons and a set of five gray stars. These tools allow you to mark individual posts as read, add the post to the “Clippings” folder, and the ability to forward the post to an email account. The stars allow you to rate the post. These ratings will flow back to the original source (if they have a NewsGator account) and also help to show other users online determine if this feed/post is of value.
The My Clippings folder is quite useful for “clipping” a favorite post and storing it for later reference. You can also syndicate your My Clippings folder in RSS, and make it available to the public. Its kind of a neat way of saving important posts from a variety of feeds.
The AJAX interface of NewsGator Online worked well in Internet Explorer, but worked better in Firefox. I believe the key on this is to have a current Java VM as AJAX makes significant use of JAVA, and my IE6SP2 install only has the limited MS Java VM installed. Some of the functionality I missed using IE6 were right-click options. These range from marking items as read, deleting, moving, expanding/collapsing, Unsubscribe, and “visit site”. These right-click menu options worked wonderfully in Firefox, and I’ll be installing an updated Java VM on my main home machine to test this out.
Additional features allow you to add a Blogroll to your blog from NewsGator Online, supply an OPML URL, add a NewsGator auto-subscribe link on your blog, add NewsGator ratings to your site, and offer API options to developers. The knowledge base was consistent and easy to use. Structured in a hierarchical format, the articles were easy to read and the system was quick. The customary FAQ was easily found and contained helpful starter how-to’s.
The one downside to the knowledge base, was that once deep within the system, there was no easy link at the top or bottom of the otherwise cleanly designed page to go back to the “reader” view. A few simply “back” clicks get me to where I wanted, but a simple “Reader” link would be better.
Performance
This online news reader was rather quick. I’ve seen faster ones (Attensa for example), but
Dislikes
I actually like this product and may keep my free account, but I did see some strange behavior when marking posts as read. When you click on the folder instead of expanding the folder, then mark the feeds as read, the folder closes. If you expand the folder, then marking fields in a feed as read does not close the folder. This makes sense, but when you click on the folder it appears to expand the folder and allow you to click on feeds, so it is a little confusing.
Summary
To finish up, I find that I like the speed, flexibility, style and ease of use of the NewsGator Online product. Here’s how I rate it (1 being low and 5 being high).
UPDATE: I have to take back what I said about IE6 – at least for some installations the same full functionality will be available. After re-building my day-to-day system with a clean install of XPSP2, I find that all the AJAX functionality in Firefox is also here. Must have something messed up on my other system (sorry).
UPDATE2: While I was unable to find an export function, Jonathon McDougall from NewsGator recommends the following tip to save your OPML. Enjoy!
Thank you Jonathon!
UPDATE3: Check out the review of NewsGator Mobile at Arne Hess’ the::unwired!
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