Today’s nifty desktop utility spotlights on Alertbear, a RSS news reader for Microsoft Windows.
Most RSS news readers give you a pile of feeds, and then within that a pile of stories, and then when you select those you get content. The interface assumes you’re giving the application full attention, and that you have time to read everything.
Alertbear works differently; it knows that news is a firehose of content with a shelf life. More importantly, it realizes you’re going to be in the middle of something, and you may, or may not, want to stop what you’re doing.
When a pile of news articles are ready, they pop up in the bottom right corner of the screen. If you ignore them, they go away in a second or two. If you move the mouse over them, you can scroll through the list, clicking on stories that are interesting. If you’re using FireFox, these will appear as new tabs in your browser. When you right click, the list goes away and you can resume work, coming back to your browser when you’re ready, having all the choice material at your disposal.
I find Alertbear a great way to stay on top of breaking news and technology announcements without having to break my workflow or attention span.
WALT GIVES ALERTBEAR FIVE STARS.
