Entries tagged with rss - Channel 10

Download Soapbox Videos to Your PC & Zune

sarahintampa — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:09:00 GMT

Thanks to a new feature in Soapbox, the section of user-generated videos found here on MSN Video, you can now automatically download and sync videos to your PC and to your Zune. With this new option, you can subscribe to Soapbox videos by category, user video list, or via a search. That last option is especially helpful, as it will retrieve any videos relating to a particular search term and have them automatically sync to your PC. So, for example, if you wanted to see all the videos about Live Mesh, you could just search for the term live mesh and subscribe the results.

To see the subscribe option for the videos found via a search, click “view all results” and you’ll notice both an RSS icon for subscribing to the videos in your preferred RSS software as well as a “subscribe with Zune” button ( ) to have the videos added to your podcast subscriptions in your Zune software (which, by the way, is a free download – you don’t need to own a Zune to use it).

If you need access to the video files themselves, you’ll find them in the Zune/Podcasts folder. Michael Gannotti recently blogged about this to demonstrate how you could access his SharePoint videos from Soapbox, so we thank him for providing us with this excellent tip!

Read RSS Feeds on Your Media Center TV

sarahintampa — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:40:00 GMT

The Media Center RSS Reader application lets you read RSS news items on your Media Center TV as well as watch and/or listen to podcasts and watch video blogs. Originally developed for XP Media Center, there is now also a version for Vista Ultimate. The application adds a new option to Media Center's Start page called "Accessories." From there, you'll have access to a section called "RSS News & Casts" where you'll be able to view your feeds. If you run into any formatting issues or unsupported codecs, the site suggests you try downloading the content to your PC instead via IE's built-in RSS reader, instead. Since I use my Xbox 360 to watch Media Center content on my living room TV, I'm excited to have a way to access not just feeds, but podcasts too, without the addition of another set-top box to do so. (thanks to scribkin for the tip!)

PCWorld Tells You How To Do Everything Faster

sarahintampa — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:05:00 GMT

A new article over at PCWorld.com offers up 22 tips on more efficient ways to perform common tech tasks - things like reinstalling Windows, backing up your data, creating a podcast, making a web site, sharing photos, and more. Here are a few sample tips from the article:

Add a Folder to Your Favorites: Drag the beloved folder from Windows Explorer to the Start button, and from there to the Favorites menu. In Windows XP, you also have the option of opening the folder and then clicking Favorites, Add to Favorites from inside the Explorer window.

Fix a Photo's Exposure: Microsoft's Windows Live Photo Gallery app improves on Vista's Photo Gallery program. Select Fix, Adjust Exposure In Windows Live Photo Gallery (which runs in both Vista and XP), and you'll get both Highlights and Shadows sliders and a histogram, as well as the familiar old Brightness and Contrast options.

Read the News: A number of free services can send you RSS feeds over e-mail. My favorite is SendMeRSS.com, which is so easy that you don't even have to register with the site, although doing so will make adding feeds simpler. Just enter the URL for the RSS feed you want, type in your e-mail address, and click Feed. From then on, new items will automatically appear in your inbox.

Email Large Files: My rule of thumb: Never e-mail more than 1MB of content without the express permission of the recipient. As an alternative, try YouSendIt, a brain-dead-simple take on the FTP transfer. The service is free for any file under 100MB, and individual files can be downloaded up to 100 times. You don't even have to sign up and enter a password (though the service offers additional features if you do, and even more if you pay). Just enter both e-mail addresses, point to the file, and click the Send button.

There are eighteen other great tips like those above, so you're sure to discover some tip, idea, or software app to use that you didn't already know about before.

News Search Adds RSS

sarahintampa — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:43:00 GMT

Here's some great news from the Windows Live Search team: Earlier this month, we told you when the new web service News Search was launched. The site, which offers many great features like local news and top videos was only missing one thing as far as its users were concerned: RSS feeds. Well, no more! A blog posting on the Live Search blog states, "you wanted it, and now you have it." That's right, RSS feed are now available in News Search for all the categories or for the specific searches you perform. Thanks guys!

RSS in Outlook

sarahintampa — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:00:00 GMT

There are lots of ways to keep up with your RSS feeds - online, in a desktop reader, in a program like Newsgator's Inbox 3.0 which integrates into Outlook, or even just in Outlook itself. That last option is especially useful if you work in a company that doesn't allow you to install software on your computer, like a desktop reader, or maybe you just don't want to appear as if you're surfing the internet every time someone looks over your shoulder. (This blog I'm reading is work-related, I swear!)

Outlook 2007 has RSS feed reading built right into the software. Besides being able to subscribe and read your feeds in Outlook, you can also share interesting feeds with your colleagues, too - just right-click on any feed and choose "Share This Feed." An email will be automatically created with a link to the RSS feed, so the recipient can subscribe as well.

If you're thinking about getting started with RSS in Outlook, this CNET video shows you how via Molly Wood's one-minute quick tip.

Live Maps and Virtual Earth 3D Keep Getting Better

Larry — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:18:00 GMT

The Live Maps / Virtual Earth team must have gotten the last shipment of Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel and are putting it to good use pumping out tons of great new features. Jump over to the Virtual Earth Blog for a full recap, or over to ars technica for a hands on look, or just go to http://maps.live.com to use it.

Some of the cool new features include improved 3D views with higher resolution textures, the ability to export to your GPS, the ability to make your own 3D models with 3DVIA (just right click where you want a building), street/other labels in birds eye view, and 1-click directions.

One of my favorite new features is the mash-up features, check out this view of Giants Stadium with a seating data overlay. Also check out this view of the Seattle Transit System.

Those alone make for a significant update, but there's much more. You can now share your custom map content with other people, you can browse to a location and subscribe to a geo-location via RSS, there are tour enhancements, high-def movie output, and direction/traffic enhancements. Great stuff!

Update: Max on Channel 8 has a video, check it out.

Search Results to RSS Feeds

sarahintampa — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:41:00 GMT

This is one of those things that I'm embarrassed to say that I honestly just discovered. I guess I hadn't really needed to turn a search result into an RSS feed until recently, but when I did, I was actually stumped for a bit as to the best way to go about doing so. I mean, I'm familiar with "Alerts," but a feed? Hmmm... Well, as it turns out, you can do this with Live Search!

According to this blog post from 2005, (yeah 2005...I told you this was embarrassing) you can turn any web search into a feed. I really didn't know this!

The trick is to do a search, then append the text ‘&format=rss’ to the URL. Subscribe. I'm only admitting my ignorance here in case someone else, like me, finds this useful.

NewsGator Consumer Products Now Free

Larry — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:07:00 GMT

NewsGator just announced that NetNewsWire 3.1, FeedDemon 2.6, and NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile will be free. In fact, all consumer products are available at www.newsgator.com for free starting today, and this includes free synchronization. The trade-off includes some data-collection on which feeds you click, but you can turn it off if you don't mind not having synch. Leaving it on helps us all in determining what's popular at any given moment. FeedDemon is a great product so this is great news for RSS users.

Mobile RSS & More

sarahintampa — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 08:29:00 GMT

Viigo Personal is a free application for Blackberry & Windows Mobile devices that goes beyond being just a mobile RSS reader. With the Viigo application, you can keep up-to-date with your favorite blogs, news, sports, entertainment, and markets from anywhere you go. The RSS reader lets you keep up with your feeds on the go of course, but the service also offers other features like local weather, headlines, local events, and more. The "local events" feature that lets you subscribe to events, like theater, special interest groups, and bands, for wherever you live. Another feature, "Channels," lets you set up channels to watch for information from the internet on various topics that are of interest to you. There is even a package-tracking feature that lets you track your packages from the main mail and package carriers. The combination of these features, make Viigo a great choice if you are looking for a mobile RSS reader download. Viigo also offers paid versions, Viigo Publisher, which helps you deploy and monetize mobile content, and Viigo Enterprise, which integrates with Blackberry Enterprise Server for deploying and managing content for your corporate BES users.

RSS Screensaver

sarahintampa — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:25:00 GMT

Rsssaver is a RSS screen saver for Windows PCs. Currently in open beta, rsssaver previews RSS feeds from the net and displays them on your screen when your computer's screen saver kicks in. The screen saver shows the channel, title, description, and publish date from any valid RSS URL. Using the OpenGL text rendering engine, the fonts are smooth scrolling and clean. The free application supports Windows 2000, XP, and, as of August, it was "sort of" working in Vista. It looks like the developer hit a snag when trying to code for Vista. Maybe someone can help him out? This would be a killer download for Vista users like myself. The download is available here.

Feeds Plus: Enhanced Feed Reading in IE7

sarahintampa — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:11:00 GMT

Feeds Plus is an "unofficial" IE7 add-on developed by Nate Furtwangler and Chrix Finne, both of whom interned with the IE RSS Team. The Feeds Plus add-on they created during this time brings aggregation and notification to your IE7 feed reading experience. With Feeds Plus, feeds can be grouped within a folder and read as an aggregated feed, and this feed can be searched, sorted, and filtered just like you can with non-aggregated feeds.

A second feature is a pop-up feed notification reminiscent of Outlook’s. You can decide which feeds matter most to you and then be notified with this pop-up as soon as those feeds have new items waiting. The pop-up is unobtrusive - it fades in and out - and it includes a handy link to the feeds that it’s announcing. For more info on Feed Plus check out this blog post at the Microsoft RSS blog. You can get the Feed Plus add-on here.

Use Windows Live Mail as an RSS Reader

sarahintampa — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:38:00 GMT

It may come as a surprise to you, but there is a free, built-in RSS reader in Windows Vista. Haven't noticed it yet? It's the feed reader that's available in Vista's Windows Live Mail. Windows Live Mail utilizes the Internet Explorer 7 RSS feed store in Windows Vista. The Windows RSS platform takes this "Common Feed List" and intergrates it into Windows Live Mail. This means that any feed you subscribe to in IE7 automatically appears in your Windows Live Mail, too. The feeds are displayed in a separate tab in Windows Live Mail, which makes it easy to switch between your feeds and your email. Since your feeds are in Live Mail, you can take advantage of the "Search Folders" technology to make custom folders for your feeds like "Flagged Feeds," "Unread Feeds," etc. Non-Vista users can get Windows Live Mail here. Thanks to the Windows Vista Blog for this tip!

The Geek Stories: Stepping thru' Particls

nhodge — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 08:58:00 GMT

On weekends and also in the evenings, I get to meet some interesting Web 2.0 developer types.

Here, at super-secret Faraday Media central, I met and conversed with Chris Saad and Ashley Angell. Developers of Particls, their software watches what you want to watch on the web.

In this episode of The Geek Stories, we discuss the concepts of newsfeeds, watching too much information, Megan Gale, Microsoft and other strange topics.

Upgrade Vista or IE7's Built-In Feed Reader

sarahintampa — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:13:00 GMT

If you regularly use Vista or Internet Explorer 7's built-in RSS feed reader, but wish you could do more with it, you'll love the free upgrade to RikReader. Codename:RikReader is an RSS reader which complements the RSS platform in Vista and IE7. Once installed, the application offers a choice of views for reading your feeds. You can read feeds in a standard view, with items ordered by date posted. You can read feeds individually, or if they are grouped into folders for better organization, you can read all the items contained in one of the folders.

With the reader's unified view, you can also choose to see all the feeds you subscribe to in a single list. A view called "Newspaper View," displays feeds organized as if they were articles on a newspaper page, which is a unique and aesthetically pleasing way to read your items. Best of all, though, is RikReader's search ability. The reader offers full-text, indexed searching which allows your to perform advanced searching of all of your items quickly and easily from the search box at the top of the reader's window. Search is a feature that is often sorely lacking in many online readers, so that feature alone, makes RikReader worth a try.

Share Your Feeds

sarahintampa — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 23:10:00 GMT

The purpose of the website at share.opml.org is to gather a community of RSS subscription lists, in OPML format, and aggregate them in interesting way. An OPML file is essentially a list of the RSS feeds you subscribe to in your preferred RSS reader. Most RSS readers offer a way for you to export your subscription list to an OPML file, which can then be uploaded and shared at the share.opml.org website. You also have the option of sharing your feeds by entering in the URL of your OPML file. Once you're a member and participating by sharing your feeds, you can really take advantage of what the site has to offer. You can view the "Top 100 Feeds" and "Top Podcasts," view the list of the "Most Prolific Subscribers," or query who subscribes to a particular URL, which is a great feature for vanity searches. However, the most useful feature is "Subscriptions Like Mine," which lists all the members of the site who have a feed list similar to your own. This offers you an easy way to discover new feeds may interest you by allowing you to puruse the feed lists of others who have similar tastes in web content.

WPF: UniveRSS 3D RSS reader

Larry — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 00:13:00 GMT

Without a doubt, WPF is one of the coolest features of Vista. If you're a new Vista user and want to see an example of how WPF opens up new alternatives to UI, check out UniveRSS. This WPF app lets you explore your RSS feeds in a 3D space, mapping your feeds to rotating cubes. There is a grid view if you prefer old-school navigation. Best of all, the app is only a 364k download.

Faster, Easier and Safer...this ain't your Grandma's Internet Explorer

Laura — Tue, 16 May 2006 17:00:00 GMT

Dean Hachamovitch from the Internet Explorer team invaded our studios to give us an up close and personal demo on Internet Explorer 7. He showed off the cleaned up browser, amped safety precautions, easier searching and all the goods to make your RSS feeds as easy as pie. Plus Beta 2 is available now! Go get it! Go!

Links: IE 7, IE Team Blog, RSS definition, What is Phishing?