Newsgator part 3

Just so I don't leave it hanging, I got a reply from the Newsgator support group about the imminent demise of my free account.  Apparently, the only thing I'll lose will be the 'helpful personal email support'.  Considering the only time I used this was to ask about what happens come May, when the account expires, I doubt I'll miss it much.  I'm still left feeling there's something not quite right, but we'll see in May.  Having got different feeds running to home, work and the PDA phone, I wouldn't object to losing the synchronisation options, but it still looks very much as though having an actual, paid up, account is a pre-requisite to configuring any of the applications.

Filler

Nothing more, nothing less.

I'm aware that I haven't added anything significant to these ramblings for a while.  It's not because there's nothing going on - quite the opposite, in fact.  However, much of what's happening is too homely to be of any possible interest, and the remainder remains too closely associated with work - about which I will not write in any detail.  If I told you, there are too many people out there for me to kill.

Face it, not everyone's life is a soap opera: dramatic happenings with little or no gaps between.  Some of us work 9 to 5, with family events filling the evenings and weekends.

Thinking of soaps, it always amazes me how anyone could live in somewhere like Albert Square - too many criminals carrying out too many crimes to be any sort of reflection on real life.  What's the hook in these programmes?  Misery piled upon despair loaded with lowlifes and steeped in madness.  Is there a single normal character in any TV soap?  No, because that would make it normal, and normality isn't what people want.

I can understand the attraction of something like Dynasty - how the other half lives, something to aspire to (albeit every bit as despicable as Corrie or East Enders).  But what is at all attractive about Emmerdale and its ilk?  All out to do each other down, never a bit of real effort or real neighbourly feeling.  I have a theory that all the soaps are really written from one script, with just regional accents differing.  The story lines seem to follow the same patterns, the situations (always based around some drinking establishment, be it the Queen's Head, Rover's Return or the Woolpack), and similar characters in each.  Even when an individual character is written out, they are replaced by someone very similar, maintaining the standard cast across all the variants.

Still, I suppose it means that you only need watch one programme per night to keep up with all the stories - leaving more time for work and family, so we must all be grateful.  Imagine having to keep up with three or four different storylines?  There'd be even less time for blogging - but no more to write about.

Hey, new toy!

Continuing the saga of PDA developments, it's just been brought to my attention that I can blog straight from the phone. My main worry with this is the security - it seems to be dependent on obscurity if you want instant dissemination, not very good.
Ah well, I can always delete any posts I later regret, sorry - any posts I never made.

Newsgator part 2

Followup to yesterday's post - just had a battle with Newsgator on the PDA, and it came close to winning.  For some reason, all my selected feeds went AWOL from the device.  The web-based central management bit was untouched, yes, all selected feeds would be synchronised, but the device just didn't want to know.

Under these circumstances, I've found the best route is to deinstall and reinstall.  But the application has a really firm grip - "I'm on your PDA, and I'm not letting go".  It won't deinstall.  And therefore, it won't reinstall.  Eventually fixed by going into File Manager and deleting the entire folder, but it's not nice.  Yes, the feeds came back, but I think there's something seriously wrong with this concept.

I am seriously going off Newsgator.

Newsgator

Some years ago, I got the RSS bug.  I've been an avid collector of info for a long time, starting with the old Compuserve forums, moving on to Usenet and now collecting RSS feeds as though they are going out of fashion.  It's amazing what a store of knowledge and ideas there is out there, and I find it inspiring to see multiple points of view on single topics.

My tool of choice for blogs and other feeds was FeedDemon - and it was with some misgivings that I heard that Nick Bradbury, the author of this excellent application, had sold it on to Newsgator.  I fully understand Nick's reasoning, explained at the time, that it gave him the opportunity to do more with than he had as a one-man band, but there's something about Newsgator's approach to integration and management of feeds that I just don't get.  On more than one occasion, I've come close to wiping out my entire set of URL's, which would be a disaster.

It makes sense to keep a central record of the set of feeds, tracking just which posts had been read on different systems, and allowing for overlap of selections between machines.  Obviously, I want to read different feeds at work from home (although there are some common elements - who'd want to risk missing the latest Slashdot assault on good taste and sense?), but every time I try to tune this selection, I lose feeds, in some cases almost everything on a given install of FeedDemon.

Now it's got worse - Newsgator do a mobile reader, for PDA's, so I just had to have it on the phone.  And something's gone very wrong - at the moment, I have no feeds at all on the phone, despite a properly completed configuration on the Newsgator central web site.  At least the local PC set seems ok, but I'm not risking anything - time to generate a new OPML list.

One other slightly worrying thing - when FeedDemon was incorporated into Newsgator's stable, part of the deal was that paid up users got a free Newsgator subscription.  Use of this system doesn't seem to be optional - and my subscription runs out in May.  I hope I'm not going to lose the use of the package across all platforms - I'd gladly go back to manual management of the feeds, but it doesn't seem possible to set things up without a login account.  Watch this space.

Gadget warning

If you don't want to be tempted, don't read any further.

The drought is officially over - a new phone has entered the local domain.  After over a year fighting with the XDA Exec (and losing usually), then another year in the wilds with a Jet - which makes an admirable phone, but doesn't cut it in terms of extra functionality - I bit the bullet and plumped for the latest addition to the O2 stable, the Orbit2.  Although this is just a HTC Touch Cruise under another name, the terms of my contract with O2 made this irresistible, especially as they give me 'unlimited' web access as part of the deal.  I don't want to tempt fate by testing what they mean by 'unlimited', but I'm fairly sure it doesn't match either my definition, or the OED's.  However, if I ever do reach the limit, I'm quite sure O2 will tell me.  Probably in quite definite and terminal terms.

It's a very nice piece of kit, and having spent a few minutes of my time (plus a lot of everyone else's around me - we still don't have a formal procedure for setting up Exchange synchronisation on these PDAs), it's now not only easy to use, but pleasant to look at - if you like black.  Strange how we insist on colour screens and yet the clearest, most desired colour scheme is almost monochrome.

Lots of nice additions over the old WM5 interface on the Exec, but really that wouldn't matter - the Exec was an interesting diversion, but really too much packed into too early a chassis, and I had nothing but problems with the models I owned.  The Jet was just a phone - nothing else was worth even trying, though the almost enforced lack of email made me take up texting to a slightly greater degree than before.  Now I have the full functionality of the network again, complete with the ability to select between 3G, wifi and Bluetooth.  Not everything works transparently - one day, I'll understand why they don't allow syncing of contacts etc over wifi, and why I can't sync my Exchange email when the phone is plugged in to a USB cable attached to my home PC, but take it back out (after charging) and lo and behold, everything just picks up via the 3G link.