The Bottom Line
Pros
- Lets you use Outlook grouping, archiving, filtering and search features
- intraVnews integrates RSS feeds into Outlook well, support blog posting too
- A searchable feed database makes subscribing easy in intraVnews
Cons
- Some tasks could be more straight forward in intraVnews
- intraVnews doesn't integrate news search engines
- No tool to keep multiple intraVnews installations in sync
Description
- intraVnews lets you read RSS and Atom feeds in Microsoft Outlook.
- Feeds can be downloaded to separate folder automatically or all collected in one intraVnews folder.
- Internet Explorer integration, drag-and-drop and an online RSS feed database make subscribing easy.
- intraVnews can automatically download linked web sites for offline reading inside Outlook.
- You can specify update schedules per feed or let intraVnews determine the perfect schedule.
- Old items can be cleaned up using Outlook AutoArchive or intraVnews' own cleanup schedule.
- intraVnews can alert you about new items using a news balloon.
- intraVnews subscriptions can be exported to and imported from OPML files.
- You can post to your blog from within intraVnews using IBlogExtension plugins.
- intraVnews supports Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/3/XP and Outlook 2002/3, requires .NET Framework 1.1.
Guide Review - intraVnews 1.11 - RSS News Feed Reader
With intraVnews, you can use all of Outlook's organizational talent for news items and blog posts — powerful searching and grouping, for example, as well as filters and automatic archiving. Best of all, it's easy to set up virtual folders in Outlook 2003 that automatically collect relevant items from all your mail folders and intraVnews RSS feeds.
While intraVnews makes it relatively easy to subscribe and unsubscribe feeds and comes with a very useful, searchable feed database, some tasks could probably made easier. The various options are scattered in several dialogs and menus.
Fortunately, they aren't needed often, though, and intraVnews hums along nicely in the background, keeping you up to date comfortably and elegantly. And should any story really spark your interest, you can write about it in your blog right from within intraVnews as well (using any NewsGator compatible blogging plug-in).
It's a pity intraVnews lacks a tool or service to keep multiple installations in sync automatically. OPML feed list import and export is supported, though.
