NetNewsWire

Just yesterday I wrote about one favourite feature of NetNewsWire: adding photos directly to iPhoto. When I made the screenshot I had to be a bit careful, as I’m always running a beta version and didn’t want to include anything I wasn’t supposed to reveal.

I first started using NetNewsWire back in around February 2003, when I paid US$29.95 for the Pro version. That was something like version 1 and I haven’t paid a cent for it since, even though it’s been through 2 whole version upgrades, and many point releases, and added synchronising via NewsGator. That’s more than fantastic value, for one of the best bits of software there is.

Today we’ve found out it won’t cost a cent more — for upgrades or new users, and the free, Lite, version has disappeared because the full version is now free for all. As of today, that full version is v3.1, with some great new features as explained in the quote below.

While US$30 wasn’t a high price for this excellent software, it was still a barrier for some. Now there’s no barrier, so why not download it right now and give it a try?

RSS Reader for Mac - NetNewsWire: … an easy-to-use RSS and Atom reader for your Mac

• New! UI update with new toolbar icons.
• New! Performance and memory enhancements including an improved Combined View which uses multiple pages to display long lists of items.
• New! HTML Archive feature — saves news items as HTML files on disk. These files are compatible with any web browser.
• Desktop integration — Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Growl, Twitterrific and more.
• Great new look — improved Combined View, feed “cover art”, full-screen mode, and tabs with thumbnails and animations.
• Synchronized clippings — read your saved articles from the web or another NewsGator reader.
• Microformat detection for contacts and calendar events.
• Automatic checking for newer versions of the software.
• Automatic download of podcasts and transfer to iTunes.
• Smart lists to aggregate news from your feeds based on criteria.

Congratulations too, to Brent Simmons, the developer who listens to the users, responds quickly to feature requests and bug reports, and whose sole aim in life seems to be to make the best, highest quality, software around, all with an ‘anti-bloat’ philosophy.

I know it’s not done to quote stuff from closed mailing lists in a blog, but I’m pretty sure Brent wouldn’t mind my quoting his words from an email the other day:

Another thing is my commitment to smallness. The size of 3.1 (at this moment) is 17.5 MB. NetNewsWire 3.0 was 29 MB, and NetNewsWire 2.1.1 was 24.1 MB!

Way to go Brent! making ever better software by taking out the bloat and removing features like crazy. What’s left is E³: effective, efficient and elegant.

Popularity: 15% [?]

There are just so many things I like about NetNewsWire. One of them is that it’s easy to add photos from RSS feeds to iPhoto: Control click on the photo and choose Add Image to iPhoto Library from the contextual menu.

iPhoto opens up, and the full-sized image is magically imported.

The screenshot shows me adding a gorgeous Jupiter-Io Montage from the Astronomy Picture of the Day feed.

Once upon a time I used to use collections of my own photos for desktop backgrounds. These days I carefully select just some of my own images and have an at least equal number of stunning astronomy images to enjoy. Thanks NetNewsWire.

Popularity: 30% [?]