15-Minute Reviews :: News Screensaver

Hello everyone and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is News Screensaver by ExtraLabs Software – A screensaver to feed your need for news, stocks and weather using feeds.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“News Screensaver allows you to always have the most recent news, weather forecasts and stock quotes on your computer screen. The screensaver supports all RSS, RDF and Atom formats.

The primary advantages of the program are: configurable interface, low system requirements, simplicity and convenience of usage. News Screensaver is a real must have for those who want to keep the track of events or just profitably spend a little break during the long work hours.”

Quick Pros

• Layout intelligent and easy to follow
• Setup easy to get rolling
• Ability to pull up full article by hitting F2 handy
• Allows you to have your own images in the background to cycle

Quick Cons

• Countries really need to be in alphabetical order
• Resets the city I chose to the topmost city in the list next time you open settings
• Could it be set up so it only reads new feed items only and display the feed it is currently in?

Expansion

While seeming simple, this screensaver packs a bit of a punch. It offers a lot in an easy-to-use package. It has the current temperature with a small symbol of current weather; The date and time is displayed on the other end of the weather bar; The feeds are easy to follow and offer the ability to open any of the articles to be able to fully read them by pressing F2 on the article you wish to read. The layout of the screen is very easy to follow; It displays the 5 most recent posts from each feed and progresses through displaying a portion of the feed item on screen. I could get the general drift of the article by simply glimpsing at the screen.

I also liked the fact that I could add in my own background images to cycle; I’d stick to a little darker- or rich-colored images so that you can read the white lettering more easily; Even if you do happen upon a light-colored background, you can still read the text decently because of the darker semi-transparent box behind the text.

I stumbled into a bug and some issues with choosing the weather settings. The bug seems to be that every time I re-open the settings page, it does not retain the city you chose; It defaults back to the top-most city for your country; A bit of an irritant when you’re trying to get feeds set up. As well, the countries really need to be in alphabetical order. It was difficult to wade through and find countries such as Mexico, Canada and so forth; US and UK are both at the top, and there is some alphabetical order to the countries in groupings.

While I do enjoy this screensaver, if I were to use it on an alternate computer/Virtual PC to watch feeds ticker by, it’d be nice to be able to have the application only bring up new articles it has not previously read. While the current functionality is great for just parusing the news while relaxing, the functionality of only new feed items would be handy for those who have a large number of feeds or feeds that update often (or a combination therein) and would like a little more speed flipping through the feeds that don’t update often; If you leave the screensaver at the default speed, it works out to be 50 seconds per feed; Get 15 feeds or more in the list, and each pass can take an hour to go through. Another handy feature might be the ability to have a standalone version that could be ran on a secondary monitor for those who are truly news junkies.

Final Verdict

This is the most useful screensaver I’ve seen come through Giveaway of the Day – I will likely toss it up in a Virtual PC so that I can watch my feed list. While there are small bugs and the desire for more functionality when it comes to the feeds, it isn’t a bad application/screensaver at all. For free, if you have screen downtime that you’d love to lean back and watch the feeds flip by or want to fire this up in a Virtual PC or secondary computer, you might as well pick this up while it is free. As for paying $13.96, this isn’t a bad price if you love your feeds and want to watch them as well during downtime or breaks.

Posted by BladedThoth on Tuesday, June 26, 2007