Times: Review and Giveaway
Posted by Jack Amick on 05/2/08 in Featured, Web, Giveaways, Internet, Utilities
There are currently many RSS applications out for Mac, but none of them are quite like Times. Times reinvents the user interface of an RSS reader by making it look similar to a newspaper. With a simple interface, Times makes it easy for anyone to read and view RSS feeds. It also has many special effects to make it look even better.
I’ll start with adding new feeds. To add a new website you can either click File-New Feed, Command-N, or click the plus arrow in the feed panel. If you have something on your clipboard it will automatically fill in most of the information. Once you have added some of your favorite sites you need to add them to one of your pages. You can have different pages to sort your news. Each page includes 3 main sections: a vertical bar on the right side, a horizontal bar on top, and a main area in the middle. To add a feed simply drag and drop the feed from the feed panel to a section of the page. To remove a feed you click the x icon in the corner, which only shows up when the feed panel is open.
Ok, so now you have all your pages set up and feeds in them. To switch pages simply click the name of the page on the bar on top. Then the current page slides away and reveals the other one. Reading feeds is very easy, too. If you click on one of the articles, the page peels back (or slides down) to reveal the full article. You can then scroll through the article or click the Read link at the bottom to open it in Safari. New articles in Times are marked with a small blue dot next to each article, and a red “New” badge is added to the dock icon. Then the pages with new feeds will have their titles in a blue font.
If you ever want to read articles that interest you, after looking through all of your new articles, you can add them to the shelf. To open the shelf just click the small black icon in the top right, next to the pencil, and a wooden shelf pops up on the bottom. Then you can drag articles straight from the main view onto the shelf. The shelf has space for 4 stacks of articles, and stacks work just like the ones on the dock in Mac OSX Leopard. When you mouse over a stack all the articles spring out and you can select one to view. In the application’s preferences you can change when the shelf automatically clears.
Times does a great job of changing the RSS reader. It is a major change compared to a normal RSS reader, and makes it even easier to use. Times is available today for $30 CAD from Acrylic Apps. But wait, there’s more! Dustin MacDonald was kind enough to give us 3 licenses to give away. Just post what you like about Times and any suggestions in the comments for your chance to win. Winners will be randomly selected on May 9.
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