Killer Download is a new feature on Download.com in which we'll present a new program each week. Most will be free, but some may be good enough that paying a low registration charge is well worth the cost. If you are found by you have a much better option than the software featured, let us know in the comments! What method do you use to get the news? For a long time, I used my Web browser and grabbed bookmarks when I found good news sites. But before long those bookmarks multiplied, making it difficult to find particular sites; I realized i had to discover a real way to organize them all. The most apparent method was to continue with a regular Internet browser and put similar sites into folders, calling them "News" and "Blogs" and "Software," or whatever category fit the bill. This method worked fairly well, but I never knew when any of the sites updated without actually going to the site and checking. Naturally, all sites don't update according to a schedule, so I figured out that I needed to try something else quickly. Fortunately, most of the sites I visit an XML link for RSS feeds offer. So I did a little research and found an excellent free feed reader called RSS Bandit. Clicking on a feed subscription brings up all the whole stories from that site. RSS Bandit, like most RSS programs, has a three-pane interface with my set of feed subscriptions on the left, headlines on the top-right, and short summaries with links on the lower-right. The feed subscription list is broken down into category folders and lets me know how many new feeds are available. Plus, RSS Bandit checks the sites for new content for me. When I click a link to a story on the lower-right, RSS Bandit opens the story in full page view (like a browser) to the right of my feed list. With this setup, it's easy to go down the list and only look at stories that contain updated since the last time I checked. One of the best features is the ability to automatically find feeds on sites I'm interested in. When I look for a good news site, I can hit the "New" button on the upper-left of the interface to open a simple wizard. From here, all I have to do is add the site's URL and RSS Bandit finds all the XML links (some sites have several for different types of news) and displays them so I can choose which types I want using check boxes. It will even let me password protect certain feeds. If you're a news junkie like I am, I recommend RSS Bandit highly. It does all the work for you and--best of all--it's free! Blasts from the past: iPhone apps of the week.
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