Review: SyndiFeed brings a personal touch to RSS reading, but needs more features

SyndiFeed If you like simplicity in your RSS and have the patience to wait for more features, give SyndiFeed a try.

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Almost everyone was sad to hear of Google Reader's demise. Free, easy to use, and relatively simple, Google Reader brought RSS to the public awareness almost single handedly. Alternatives such as Feedly, Pulse, and various browser add-ons have always existed, but received a significant boost since Google Reader's fate became known. SyndiFeed is a standalone RSS Web app (with mobile apps coming soon) that doesn't really offer anything its competitors don't, but does offer a personal touch for those burned by Google's indifference.

You can view your SyndiFeed feeds in grid or list form, the former providing an image and an excerpt of the article.

Unlike Google Reader, SyndiFeed is a one-man development project, and is also fairly new. Accordingly, it's still pretty basic when it comes to the features it offers. This is refreshing at times—basic is not always bad, after all—but makes the app almost inconvenient to use at others.

Like any RSS reader, SyndiFeed revolves around feeds, which you can either add manually by entering the feed's URL, or by importing them from Google Reader. Feed groups also exist, but there is no way to add existing feeds to them, meaning, when importing your Google Reader feeds, they're going to be jumbled around groupless, and short of adding them all again manually to groups, there's nothing you can do about this. There's also no way to edit feeds once added.

Individual articles are very readable, with large inline images but no navigation options to other articles.

When it comes to reading, SyndiFeed doesn't get much better, unfortunately. While the interface is far better-looking than Google Reader's, usability is SyndiFeed's current downfall. Each of your feeds is arranged in a magazine-like grid or a list, but there's no easy way to move between articles or feeds.

After reading an article, which opens in a separate lightbox, you need to click "Close" and click on the next article in order to move on. The reading experience is nonetheless good, making articles from any source readable with images and links that stand out, and no unnecessary page elements. While reading an article, it's also easy to share it through Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

SyndiFeed is not only about reading right now, however, making it super-easy to save articles for later reading. To do this, you can either connect SyndiFeed with your Instapaper account, or use the built-in Read Later feature to add articles to your Saved tab. There's also a SyndiFeed bookmarklet for saving items from any website to your SyndiFeed Saved tab. The Saved tab is not completely thought-out yet, but you can add several folders to it, arranging your saved items as you please.

While the option to edit feeds and groups does exist, it only lets you add and delete feeds.

I love that SyndiFeed is made by one person, and I adore its interface and simplicity. As it stands, however, it will not become my go-to RSS reader; there are just too many important features missing. The developer assures me that all these features are in the works, so if you like the look of it, it's well worth it to keep an eye on SyndiFeed and see how it develops. Every app has to start somewhere, and although it's not done yet, SyndiFeed is off to a promising start.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use this Web-based software.

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Skype turns the Internet into your own personal telephone line

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Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
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Skype is a free software app that for most people needs no introduction. It has been on the scene for nearly a decade and has transformed the telecommunications industry by offering a cheap way to make long distance phone calls.

Skype allows you to make telephone calls over the Internet. All you need is the app from the Skype website and a headset. If you want to make video calls, a webcam is also needed.

Installing Skype is a breeze so you shouldn't be put off using it by the thought of any complicated setup and steep learning curve. It really is just a case of installing the program, creating your user account and you're all set to go.

Calling other Skype users is free for as long as you want, wherever they are in the world, which is great if you have a child traveling the world or a spouse fighting with the armed forces.

View your contacts on the left of the Skype window and either call or instant-message them.

The only time you have to pay is when you are calling someone who doesn't use Skype, such as when you are calling a landline or a cell phone number. But even then, the rates are extremely cheap. With rates around roughly 1 cent a minute, it would be hard to get closer to free.

These low rates have driven many people to abandon their landlines in favor of using Skype. But you should be aware that call sound quality can vary at times, plus some countries do not allow calls to emergency services using Skype. So do your homework into these issues before ditching your landline.

As with any communication app of this kind, instant messaging comes as standard and is a pleasure to use. You can also send text messages (SMS) to cell phones (provided you have the necessary Skype credit) but sometimes these SMS messages are slightly delayed, so you should not rely on the service for any important time-sensitive messages.

With the new versions of Skype comes Facebook integration where you can view your Facebook News Feed in a separate window as well as being able to log into Facebook Chat. Another new feature is Skype Wi fi, which enables you to use your Skype credit to pay for wi fi hotspot access by downloading a smartphone app, logging into the provided hotspots, and paying for it with your Skype credit. You can also pin your most frequently used contacts to the top of your contact list for easy access.

For heavy users of the service, there is Skype Premium, or alternatively a subscription package where you can buy calling minutes to one pre-chosen country every month for a set price. Skype Premium on the other hand gives you group video chat and group screen sharing–-all for a price, of course.

But Premium allows you to buy a one-day temporary access so you can "try before you buy," which is nice if you are hesitating to commit to any long-term financial arrangements.

This is one software app that everyone should have on their computer. It may have its small downsides, but it more than makes up for them in other areas.

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Zim: Your Own Personal Desktop Wiki

Take the power and flexibility of a wiki (like Wikipedia), wrap it with a friendly Windows installer, and make it run as a local application, no server needed. You've got Zim (free): a personal open-source wiki for managing your knowledge, tasks, and calendar. You can even get the portable version, put it on a USB stick or in a Dropbox folder, and take it with you on the go.

Zim offers a no-frills, fast interface for managing personal knowledge.Zim supports familiar wiki syntax, such as using an asterisk to create bulleted lists (which are then continued automatically, like they are in Microsoft Word). You can surround text with double asterisks to make it bold, or with double slashes to make it italic. And because many of us are used to editing text in Microsoft Word and other WYSIWYG word processors, Zim also supports standard keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl-B for creating bold text, or Ctrl-I for italics.

Quick linking between pages is one of the core principles of the wiki context, and Zim doesn't disappoint. It supports the traditional Wiki link notation, which means you can surround a word or a phrase with double brackets to make them into a link (you will need to reload the page to see the link, but it's just one keystroke). Much like with bold and italic text, Zim provides a keyboard shortcut to make linking even more intuitive: Select some text and hit Ctrl-L. You can now link to that page, or even use the text as an anchor for linking to a different page (for example, maybe you want to link the word "apple" to a page called "diet"). It also supports CamelCase: When you meld two or more words LikeThis, they instantly become a link (no need to reload the page).

Despite the similar syntax, Zim feels very different from a browser-based wiki. For one, it is blazing fast in comparison: Everything happens instantly. Formatting is applied while you're still editing the page (no need to save or switch to View mode), links start working as soon as you type them in, and switching between pages takes no time at all. It feels just like a desktop application, because that's what it is. That doesn't mean Zim doesn't like the Web: If you want to, you can export your entire wiki as a collection of read-only webpages, with all links, styles, and images intact. In fact, the Zim website itself was written using Zim.

Another advantage of the desktop format is the Index: This is a sidebar on the left of the main editing area that shows your wiki pages as a long list. Pages can be nested using namespaces, so the Index sidebar can work as a tree. You could have all of your software-related pages taking up their own namespace, with page names like "software:Zim," "software:Excel," and use other namespaces on the same Zim wiki for documenting information that has nothing to do with software.

Zim also includes optional plug-ins, such as the Calendar plug-in that allows you to automatically create a page for any given date. Calendar pages are nested using namespaces, so that you have a main tree node for the year, another one for the month, and a final one for the day. In combination with Zim's ability to create to-do lists, this makes it very easy to use Zim as a traditional PIM.

If you are looking for an easy way to manage your knowledge and don't need to collaborate with others, Zim is a lovely and full-featured solution.

--Erez Zukerman

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How to Turn Off Google’s Search, Plus Your World Personal Search Results

Google’s newest feature, Search plus Your World, personalizes Google searches even further based on your Google+ account. When you enter a search query, Google will find results (or recommendations) based on who you follow on Google+ and what they’ve liked, suggested or searched for before. This can be an extremely useful feature, but sometimes you just want clean search results.

Here are some simple, step-by-step instructions on how to disable personal search results.

Enter a search term.Click the toggle button on the right hand side of your results page (the button with a globe) that says ‘hide personal results.’
 To get it back, simply click the button to the left of it that says ‘show personal results.’Select search settings from the gear icon in the top right corner of the results screen.
 Select  ’Do not use personal results’ under the Personal Results header.

Even before Search Plus your World, though, Google was personalizing your search results based on your query habits so that sites you click more often show up higher for you. Google supplies rather difficult and aggravating instructions on how to turn this feature off, but by simply typing ‘&pws=0' at the end of your search query, that particular search won’t give any personalized results.

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