One of the greatest inven-
tions of our time is the RSS
feed. There are different inter-
pretations of the acronym,
“rich site summary” and “RDF site
summary” being the most common, but
what you need to know is that an RSS
feed is a synopsis of a web site’s most
current content. For instance, all the
major news sites typically offer an RSS
feed that includes the major headlines of
the day, and the feed is updated as new
stories are posted. It’s similar to a stock-
ticker in that it feeds real-time informa-
tion about any changes or updates made
to a web site. There are numerous utilities
available to manage these streams, but
none are as elegant as RSS Bandit.
This utility’s interface is similar to
Windows Explorer, with the names of the
feeds on the left and the contents of the
feed on the right, and a pane window that
displays a particular article. Although the
application comes configured to managethe feeds of several popular sites, you can
add your own feeds as well. You can even
search for feeds via keyword, which is one
of our favorite features because it simpli-
fies the often-arduous process of locating
feeds. Once you have several feeds, you
need only select how often they’re updated.
A small popup window (which you can
toggle on or off) will appear on your desk-
top whenever new content has been addedto any of your favorite sites.
If we weren’t so enamored of RSS
Bandit, we’d say its ease of use was
insulting to our intelligence. Plus it’s
totally free, and uses just 3MB of system
memory. Free, http://www.rsbandit.orgMA XIMUMPC OCTOBER 2004
10
Unheard of
Utilities
RSS Bandit
To get started, simply type in the URL
of a site that has an RSS feed—the
software will find it for you. You can
even type in the name of the site’s
author and it will find a feed (if one is
available, of course).The Bandit has found the feed, so now
select a category, and the feed will be
added to the list for updates.If you don’t know of any exact feed
locations, you can search by keyword.
We did a search for “PC Hardware” and
it came up with what you see here.App Rocket
Our work PCs are so cluttered
with files and shortcuts that
on several occasions we’ve
demanded (to nobody in par-
ticular) a utility that can help us find items
on our desktop. Someone was listening,
apparently, because AppRocket is the utility
we’ve long been wanting.
Launch this little rocket and it quickly
scans the most common locations for files
and folders and creates a comprehensive
index. Then, when you’re ready to do a
search, just start typing the folder or file
name you’re looking for and you’ll instantly
be presented with a list of files that match
up. If you want to find a file named “kitten,”
for example, just type it in and all matches
will appear in a drawer below. If you want
to adjust your Display Settings in the
Control Panel, just type “D-I-S” and the link
appears. It’s easily the fastest way to find
anything on a PC that we’ve ever used.
And that’s just the half of it. Once you
find what you’re looking for, you can either
open it by clicking within the app, or use
the arrow keys to navigate up or down
folder levels. AppRocket can even display
ID3 information for your MP3 files, and isconfigured to perform web searches for
a dozen popular reference sites such as
Google, Dictionary.com, Amazon.com, a
stock watch, and more. You can also add
any folder to its index, remove file exten-
sions you don’t want included in your
searches, and customize the appearance
of the interface to suit your tastes.
In the end, we dig AppRocket so much
because we’ve never seen anything like
it. It’s a heck of a lot easier to use than
Windows’ search function and faster than
Explorer too. Free 30-day trial/ $18,
http://www.candylabs.comWhen you open AppRocket , it provides
a helpful crib sheet to get you started.With AppRocket highlighted, we type
in K-I-T-T and the following appears.
By default, as soon as you move the
cursor away from the list of files
and click on another document the
application slides out of sight like an
auto-hide taskbar.If you want to reduce or increase the
locations included in searches, it’s
easy to accomplish.demanded (to nobody in par-App Rocket
feed. There are different inter-
pretations of the acronym,
“rich site summary” and “RDF siteGet the news as it happen
Organize your desktop ’ s mess