Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine - Comments for "Spb Insight - News And Blogs On The Go"

Thanks for the comment. In my review I didn't really go into the templates, but they are very powerful. Here is a link to documentation on templates:

http://www.spbinsight.com/documentation.php

You can also get info from the Spb Forums: http://spbdn.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=16

The problem I see with these programs is it leads to information overload. It's nice to be up to date on certain things but there has to be a limit to how much information you really need while mobile.

Here is my list of features that would make an RSS feed program perfect for me:

1: Allow content filtering before download based on a number of different criterias like subject, category, source, author and others.
2: Allow content to be downloaded and displayed offline in a newspaper style layout. Grouped and organized in specific sections.
3: Images to be resized for a PDA friendly size.
4: Content downloaded to be deleted as it is read or after a certain timeframe if not read.
5: Content can be easily tagged for later reference and not deleted.
6: Allow for easy input of new RSS feeds.
7: Allow the ability to search for new feeds similar to how newsgroups work.

In an age where acquiring information just because we can easily will lead to imformation overload. We need to be selective in what we get before we get it.

I was really excited about Spb Insight when I first heard about it a few days ago. But I'm not sure that it is all it is cracked up to be. Granted, like all Spb programs, it seems to be a good quality program but it is also missing a lot IMHO.

For example, (1) there's no today screen plug-in; (2) unless I'm missing something, if you want to view pictures and full articles you still have to manually request each article be downloaded while you have a live internet connection (i.e., there's no way to automatically have all articles downloaded). This really limits the program's mobility and I hope I'm wrong about it; and (3) there are no "shortcut buttons" like some other programs have (e.g., a button next to "channels" and "menu" that refreshes all channels...see Iliumsoft's NewsBreak for an example).

None of these things make Insight a bad program and I've only used it for a combined total of about 5 minutes, but my initial reaction is that yes, this is a good program, but no, it's not so much better than the one I already have that I would be willing to spend $20 to acquire it.

I was one of the judges of the newsreader category in this year's PPCMag Awards and I thought it was really striking how many quality Newsreading programs there were but it was also striking that none of them had all the features you would want in a newsreader program...they were all missing one thing or another. IMHO, Spb Insight seems to continue this trend and I'm not quite sure what to think about it.

Smartphone &amp; Pocket PC magazine - Comments for "Spb Insight - News And Blogs On The Go"

Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine - Comments for "Spb Insight - News And Blogs On The Go"