The Bottom Line
NewzCrawler is a fantastic RSS feed reader with a highly usable interface and tons of useful features and gimmicks. While NewzCrawler lets you post to blogs, its weak spot is news item relations.
Pros
- NewzCrawler has a usable email-like interface
- Smart folders and color labels let you follow news structured your way
- NewzCrawler allows you to set up your own feed and post to blogs
Cons
- NewzCrawler could be simpler and still easier to use in some areas
- Doesn't put news, blog posts into context
Description
- NewzCrawler is a reader for RSS feeds, podcasts, Usenet news and "normal" web sites.
- Feeds can be organized in folders, news are displayed using a two- or three-pane interface
- Search across folders flexibly, and NewzCrawler saves searches to act as virtual folders.
- NewzCrawler lets you read individual items or compose newspapers of channels, folders or searches.
- NewzCrawler can use Gecko or Internet Explorer for rendering, supports custom CSS.
- Announces news via balloon pop-up window, news ticker or MS Agent text to speech.
- Individual news items can be saved for later to bookmarks folders in NewzCrawler.
- Smart folders collect news using flexible criteria, and items can be colored freely.
- You can publish your own RSS feed right in NewzCrawler, or post to a blog easily.
- NewzCrawler supports Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP.
Guide Review - NewzCrawler 1.8 - RSS Feed Reader
NewzCrawler may easily be one of the most feature-packed RSS feed readers, but it is also one of the most usable. Most of its gimmicks make good sense, even the news ticker and the "newspaper" (multiple news items collected on one HTML page) are useful.
NewzCrawler's tested, email-like interface works well as do the folders you can use to organize news. Searching channels is fast and searches get automatically saved to be re-used later. You can also set up smart folders that, quite flexibly, aggregate and structure news your way or label items with colors to news items for a fast overview.
News and blog context is the one area where NewzCrawler shows some weakness. On the other hand, NewzCrawler makes it really easy to post to blogs or even publish your own RSS channel. All in all, NewzCrawler is a great piece of news reading software.
