04-25-2007, 01:55 AM
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Executive Editor, Android Thoughts
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 3,233
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SPB Updates Insight - Adds Today Plugin!
"Spb Software House, the leading Windows Mobile software developer, releases Spb Insight 1.5, a long-awaited update to the innovative news reading application. Spb Insight is a Pocket PC news reader, which provides full-text articles with pictures for handy and fast offline reading. This version provides even smoother and richer news reading experience by introducing the Today plug-in with two viewing modes and article thumbnails, new faster data storage system and many other improvements."
Back in October when I reviewed SPB Insight, I mentioned that a today plugin would be nice. And lo and behold, my request (and I'm sure that of others) has been answered in SPB Insight 1.5! Add in Insight's unique ability to give you full text articles ready for offline reading, and Insight 1.5 looks like a real player in the RSS reader / offline reader area!
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Dr. Jon Westfall, MCSE, MS-MVP
Executive Editor - Android Thoughts
News Editor - Windows Phone Thoughts
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04-25-2007, 06:49 AM
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Neophyte
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 5
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I wish mobile news sites wouldn't call what this program and all the others besides egress, avantgo and mobipocket do "full text articles ready for offline reading" or "offline full text" or whatever. That's absoloute BS and misleading to boot. Most quality news sites are not tiny semi-articles like thoughts and endgadget. They actually have full articles and none of these newsreaders get that "full text" article for "offline reading".
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04-25-2007, 01:48 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 3
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silkshadow, I'm a bit surprised to hear that about Spb Insight. This program was from the beginning designed to load real full-text articles from web sites. Not only to load and show, like egress or others do, but also to clean them up from unneeded menus and optimize for small screen reading.
Almost all of the channels in our online catalog do show you full articles and there more than 10'000 (!) channels in it, submitted by Spb Insight enthusiasts.
I'm not sure if you were mislead by our support for all RSS/Atom type channels? These channels indeed provide only a fraction of article full text, and we support them to give a chance to read a channel if it's not in the online catalog.
Remember, Spb Insight is much more than a usual RSS reader. Maybe it was not so popular earlier because of problems with speed, but version 1.5 is really worth a look because all major problems were fixed.
Thanks!
Alexander Shtuchkin,
Spb Insight PM.
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04-25-2007, 03:16 PM
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Contributing Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,389
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by silkshadow
I wish mobile news sites wouldn't call what this program and all the others besides egress, avantgo and mobipocket do "full text articles ready for offline reading" or "offline full text" or whatever. That's absoloute BS and misleading to boot. Most quality news sites are not tiny semi-articles like thoughts and endgadget. They actually have full articles and none of these newsreaders get that "full text" article for "offline reading".
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Perhaps you should actually try the program before judging it.
As Alexander said it is much more than a simple RSS reader. Insight uses templates (written in java script) to parse full web pages, downloads them to your device, and formats them for your screen. So these "channels" are not just simple rss feeds but the full text and photos from the article. Although it happens to support RSS is just an added bonus. 
I had uninstalled 1.0 because it was just way too slow for me. 1.5 is a HUGE improvement over 1.0. Nice work Spb. Good update.
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04-25-2007, 04:56 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 26
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Nice app. What seems to be the appeal of the today plugin? Who is going to stare at the today screen and wait for news that you feel like reading? If I'm going to read the news, I'll open the app, right? I'm just curious why others find this feature an added bonus?
FWIW, I still cannot get to the very bottom link within an article before I'm swooshed off to the next article in the channel without pulling out the stylus. I'll cite Engadget here as a prime example.
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04-25-2007, 05:02 PM
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Contributing Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,389
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by floepie
Nice app. What seems to be the appeal of the today plugin? Who is going to stare at the today screen and wait for news that you feel like reading? If I'm going to read the news, I'll open the app, right? I'm just curious why others find this feature an added bonus?
FWIW, I still cannot get to the very bottom link within an article before I'm swooshed off to the next article in the channel without pulling out the stylus. I'll cite Engadget here as a prime example.
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hehe i am with you on the today plugin.. I never really understood why RSS readers need today plugins. I will play with the today pluging for a while and then disable it. It might be more useful if it were to indicate how many unread news items you have.
I have the same issue with the link at the bottom of the article..  I just have to hit it with my thumb.
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04-25-2007, 08:46 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 43
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I had no problems with v1.0 other than the overall speed of updates - v1.5 is a very impressive update, great speed increase - great job guys!
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04-26-2007, 06:56 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 77
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Still no scheduled updates.
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Regards,Matt
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04-26-2007, 04:07 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 75
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Still Experiencing speed issues
I had uninstalled the first version because it was too slow and tried Newbreak instead. I really like Newsbreak.
After hearing about the new version of Insight, I downloaded it and reinstalled it to my storage card. I them imported my channel data from Newsbreak.
It is still as slow as it was before for me. I have about 20 channels in all (PPC Thoughts, Digital Media Thoughts and Smartphone Thoughts of course  ) but when choosing 'Update all' from the menu, it seems to update the first 3 or 4 ok and then the progress bar stops. It doesn't matter if I am using EVDO or Wifi. I don't have this issue with Newsbreak and it is running from the storage card also.
I also have a question about 'full-text articles'. Maybe all of my feeds are simple RSS feeds, but just about all of the articles I read in Newsbreak and Insight have the same look. Some appear to have the full article while others are cut off after a few sentences and I need to click the link to finish the article online. Does anyone know if Newsbreak also downloads full-text articles? Can anyone give me a channel to add to both that shows this difference between the 2 programs?
I also really like the ability to automatically or manually download podcasts with Newsbreak.
Anyone with some 'Insight' on my issues? Sorry, couldn't resist! :wink:
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04-26-2007, 04:57 PM
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Contributing Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,389
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Re: Still Experiencing speed issues
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Originally Posted by myrampar
I also have a question about 'full-text articles'. Maybe all of my feeds are simple RSS feeds, but just about all of the articles I read in Newsbreak and Insight have the same look. Some appear to have the full article while others are cut off after a few sentences and I need to click the link to finish the article online. Does anyone know if Newsbreak also downloads full-text articles? Can anyone give me a channel to add to both that shows this difference between the 2 programs?
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If you simply imported your feeds from news break you are only getting the normal RSS feeds. To get the full text channels you need to add a new item.
Click the new button, choose "Online catalog", hit next. Browse through the catalog an find the channels you want and hit finish. Hint: the items with the blue icon are full text channels. the orange icons are plain old RSS feeds.
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Linear Mode
