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Undocked May 2006 • Vol.4 Issue 5 |
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Gritwire Free Web-based RSS & Podcasts |
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Gritwire (www.gritwire.com) is a free online aggregator for RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and podcasts, accessible from any notebook or PC with Web access. There are no help files or tutorials, so it’s aimed primarily at existing RSS users. To help such users switch, Gritwire can import existing lists of RSS feeds stored as OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) files. Gritwire had only been around for about six weeks at this writing, and so its edges were still a little rough. Basically, RSS aggregators pull headlines from Web sites that offer RSS feeds. Typical feeds provide news, blog entries, podcasts, and other periodically updated material. Each headline is hyperlinked to an article on the originating site, so you can click the items you want to read, hear, or view. The SpeedFeed Reader is Gritwire’s main panel, and it’s where you’ll find feeds and podcasts. Click a headline, and you’ll sometimes see a preview of its linked content in the lower panel. The View This Link launches the item’s URL. You can send links to other people, Gritwire users or not, and save items you don’t want to disappear as new content pushes out old headlines. However, Gritwire doesn’t offer a newspaper-style overview like FeedDemon (www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon), Pluck (www.pluck.com), and others. Also, you can only look at headlines from one feed at a time. To add a feed, you can click Subscribe when you preview feeds you find with the Search tab’s field. Otherwise, you generally have to copy and paste a URL in the Add RSS Feed item in the Configure menu. Not many sites carry Gritwire’s “chickets,” or branded RSS buttons that automatically add feeds to users’ SpeedFeeds. (Click the Gritwire logo at the lower left and then the Publishers tab for more info.) You can drag and drop feeds in the SpeedFeed Reader’s left column, but control is limited at this writing. For example, we wanted to move some feeds out of the Gritwire Recommendations folder, but the interface wouldn’t let us. Dizpersion Technologies based Gritwire on Macromedia Flash 8, so like My Yahoo!, another free Web-based aggregator, its windows and scroll bars don’t have quite the same immediate feel and functionality of an installed application. Unlike My Yahoo! there’s no Directory to help you find new feeds by topic. Podcasts seemed to work best when we added their feeds to the SpeedFeed Reader and launched them from there. The actual Podcasts icon at the bottom of the screen didn’t seem to load podcasts properly. The Wikis feature is also a little confusing until you realize that at Gritwire, Wikis are basically notes to yourself that you can share and collaborate on with Friends, meaning other Gritwire users you added to your Friends list. For instance, you can set up a grocery list that your spouse can add to from her or his Gritwire account during the day. You can tell Gritwire to send you an Alert message when a Friend changes a Wiki. Unfortunately, there’s currently no easy way to print the contents of a Wiki without using the browser to print the whole page. We found stray errors now and again, such as when we tried to Load More Items from Gritwire’s official blog. Also, you can’t copy text from certain windows. In short, Gritwire seems to be a work in progress. It’s not easy for beginners to figure out, nor does it quite have the ease-of-use and overview feature power users want. It’s clear, however, that the developers are on the case. As the Gritwire blog states, “Going forward I’d like Gritwire to be driven more by user input, so please, any and all comments are appreciated.”  by Marty Sems |
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