From the Orient

Phoenix and Minotaur to be renamed Firebird and Thunderbird

bq. Asa Dotzler writes: “After months of discussion and further months of legal investigation, we’re finally comfortable moving forward with new names. The new name for the Phoenix browser is ‘Firebird’. The documentation and product strings will be updated soon. In addition to securing Firebird, we’ve also got the OK from those contributing legal resources to use the name ‘Thunderbird’ for a mail client. Hopefully this will be the end of naming legal issues for a while.”

Only trouble is, it seems Firebird is already taken (not legally wise?) by a open source database. With “Stuart going through a similar problem”:http://www.kryogenix.org/days/464.html I wonder if there are there any names left that can be used for software?

A few updates to the blog.

First of all “a comments feed can be found here”:http://www.dellah.com/orient/comments.xml” showing the last 15 comments and trackbacks to the site.

Secondly, I’ve followed Phil’s lead and added a comments element to my “RSS feed”:http://www.dellah.com/orient/index.xml. It is quite a neat little feature from Sharpreader.

Lastly, I’ve stuck the trackback url back into my template (I forgot to put it in orignally by mistake) for those who don’t like autodiscovery

There are a some plus points to using “SharpReader”:http://www.hutteman.com/weblog/2003/04/06.html#000056 (which “I installed a few days ago”:http://www.dellah.com/orient/2003/04/08/sharpreader.shtml), but the poorness of the navigation lets it down somewhat. I’m hoping that might be because of the newness of the product, and they might be addressed in a future version.

The most important problem is the inability to go to the next unread entry with a single key press (usually space in most applications). Whilst deleting a feed entry takes you to the next entry automatically, this reduces the usefulness of SharpReader’s best feature; the threading of articles. If you delete the articles, then they don’t link together. If you don’t delete them, you don’t have an easy way of navigating.

I also like the hierarchical folder navigation you can set up, so you can group feeds together (the refresh settings work well here too although I didn’t realise this until after I’d changed the feeds individually from the default). Sadly, the poor navigation lets it down again. Even if you group feeds together, the variety of timestamps from the feeds means that your unread entries are all over the place, leaving you to scroll to find them.

The filter is useful as a search tool, but not much else. Again, there needs to be more options such as Unread articles only, or time based filters.

The threading of articles would be so much better if it could leave the box. It only links together feeds you are subscribed to. How much better would it be if it showed feeds you weren’t subscribed to?

Maybe I’m a little harsh on the product as it is quite new, but has to be compared against established applications such as “Agent”:http://www.forteinc.com/agent/index.php which has the advanced filtering and navigation.

If SharpReader had the proper navigation I would definitely use it for the threading feature, but I need it to get the basics right first. If I have to use my mouse, then I will stay with “Amphetadesk”:http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/

RSS Feed Reader / News Aggregators Directory [via "Simon":http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2003/04/11/#lotsOfRssAggregators] useful list after I’ve finished playing with SharpReader (review next). Next, I think I’ll try Syndirella and RSS Bandit.

It appears 2 is buy Caveat Lector shares just before getting linked to by Mark Pilgrim, everyone else and his dog.

I’ve doubled my money in just one week.

Anyway, Dorothea points out that it isn’t picking up blogrolling.com links. This is something I hit a while ago with my “dynamically generated blog roll”:http://www.dellah.com/orient/2003/01/28/blogroll_updated.shtml. “Technorati”:http://www.technorati.com/ didn’t think I linked to anything.

I have to sort out a similar problem now I’m moving towards a RSS feed based read. I’ll need to figure a way of showing the links on the webpage as I move them from the blog roll into RSS land.

The Bird retires. I’ll no longer be able to work out whether a Reading Festival goer is a native of Reading or not. At 7pm on each of the three days, the distinct sound of Concorde flew overhead. Natives, used to the noise, would carry on their business of getting drunk and wondering if it is worth getting up to wander over a watch some third rate band in a crowded tent.

Day trippers would raise their heads in puzzlement and if there were no clouds, they could make out the unique shape of the bend nosed airplane. Farewell.