Get the news on your desktop with FeedRoller

Sector-Seven, the developers of one of my favorite apps called “ControlPad” , has done it again with another app called “FeedRoller”.  FeedRoller is a lightweight RSS and Twitter feed ticker. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds is a way to get timely (up-to-the-minute) updates from your favorite web sites, blogs, news sites, etc… without having to visit each site directly. To make this happen you need to subscribe to a feed and have a feed reader installed to read the feed summaries. The universal RSS logo, to indicate that a site is RSS ready is:

For example, on the right side of the “What’s On My PC…” blog you will see the RSS Logo to indicate that you can subscribe to the blog and use a RSS reader to read the articles that are published without ever having to visit the blog directly.

FeedRoller is an example of a RSS feed reader, with the exception, this reader has a “cool factor” to it. It is designed to show scrolling headlines from your favorite news sites, blogs and twitter account, directly on your desktop.   As the news stories scroll by, and you see a story you want to explore further, you simply hit the “print screen” key on your keyboard and you will be taken directly to the article in your web browser.  Another “cool factor” about FeedRoller is that it is available in a portable version that will work from your flash drive (or hard drive), as well. I applaud Sector-Seven for their continuing development of FREE software, such as FeedRoller, that is just awesome!

Features

Supports RSS, Atom and Twitter feed format.

Shows news title, summary, age and source.

Customizable interface.

May be “pinned” to the desktop (always visible) or automatically hide when the computer is in use.

May be set to automatically hide when in full screen applications (games, movies etc.)

Customizable keyboard shortcuts to pause the scrolling, pin the ticker, visit the news item and more.

Can import and export feeds from other feed readers (using OPML).

Supports subscribing to feeds directly from Firefox.

Portable.

Getting Started

FeedRoller comes pre-configured with several news feeds.
When you run it for the first time, it will download these RSS feeds and start showing them on your desktop.

Right click on FeedRoller’s system tray icon to access common actions.

To Pause the ticker, press the Pause key on your keyboard.

To Pin/Unpin the ticker, press the Scroll Lock key on your keyboard.

To Visit the displayed item’s page, press the Print Screen key on your keyboard.

To manage your feeds, press F12. Checked feeds are active.

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