Rss, xml, atom are new to me. A couple weeks ago, the popular free
usenet server "Motzarella" went unexpectedly on the fritz. Other free
servers don't always work as expected, and it has been in the news that
most ISP's have dropped their subscriber usenet servers. That's kind
of scary. So I wondered what alternatives there are besides the Google
Groups web interface, which is a total pain in the ass to use. It has
no filters, and is web-based. That doesn't work for me.
I did a bit of searching, and found some basic freeware "feed reader"
programs for Windows. I subscribed to alt.comp.freeware, and some of
my other favorite groups, on Google Groups feeds, hoping I could find a
dedicated feed reader that has built-in spam filters like slrn, xnews,
or dialog uses, or might work with proxy filters, namely NewsProxy,
since that is where most of my usenet filters reside. I don't mind
starting over from scratch, provided the feed reader can filter out the
spam, if set right. To me it's worth starting over at this point.
I tried a simple program called FastTrackNews. But without any spam
filters, wading through news groups is unacceptable. Apart from that,
these syndicated feeds seem to be incredibly fast and reliable, an
improvement over stand alone free usenet servers, IMHO.
So I tried another freeware program called YeahReader. Under the
program options, it has a section for connection proxy settings. This
made me wonder if NewsProxy couldn't be made to work with it? But
NewsProxy depends on a server name or IP number. Does a URL like this:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.comp.freeware/feed/rss_v2_0_msgs.xml
work with NewsProxy? I tried it. I could not get it to work.
There might be freeware feed readers out there that have filtering
capability, but I have not found any listed in the searches I have made.
I am using key words "feed reader" and "freeware" and "filter."
Suggestions appreciated.
--
Ckyp
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