features

…made for news addicts

This AIR-based feed reader is made for serious news addicts – it’s the lightweight, uncluttered way of getting breaking news. But it lets you easily follow Twitter-generated feeds too, without the need for a twitter-account. Or let yourself be surprised by what others have discoverd when you subscribe to a Digg feed. Get the news in real time like you never did before – as if you’re in the newsroom, sitting right next to the telex machine.

If something you’re interested in has an RSS feed – xml, rss, rdf, atom – with blago.telexer, you can keep up-to-the-minute tabs on what’s happening.

set your own refresh time

On the Sources-tab, you can paste in the url of your feed. The .telexer will get the title for you if you leave the title-field empty, but you can edit that as well. Edit your existing feeds by selecting one. For example, restore the original title by clearing the title-field and clicking "apply".

You can specify each feed’s refresh time yourself: check twitter feeds very often, or blogs that post not so frequently in a two-hour interval. Make sure you *save* any changes you make.

unobtrusive notifier

The .telexer is made to be useful while you *do stuff* and will not try to get in the way. When notifying you of news, there’s enough time for you to finish your thought and get a glance at what’s new, but you can also ignore it, and later on check the .telexer "latest" status line. Or you could click it away immediately when it’s positioned over the thing you’re working on! But if you’re interested in the news item, click on the link and you can read all about it.

make it work the way you want it

On the Preferences-tab, you can customize the way the notifier behaves. You can disable the popup, and only play a sound. Or alternatively, allow the popup, but turn off the sound. You can change the sound’s volume here as well. The minimal window can be kept always in front of other windows (the main window is too large to have that feature). The .telexer can also start automatically, when you turn on your machine. It’s up to you.

scan latest news in minimal-window mode

Double-click the window handle-bar to toggle the main window to a minimal state. You could park the minimal window to the sides or top of your screen, where it’s not in the way, and keep an eye on the latest news. When other windows – applications you’re working with – claim the always-in-front position as well, the minimal window disables its up-front feature. It will need to be re-enabled in the preferences tab.

view summaries with small images

When you click on an item in the feed’s news list, a little text balloon is displayed with a short summary of the news item.

Many RSS feeds have a thumbnail image to go with the story or the feed. The .telexer can find that image in all sorts of formatted feeds.

If the summary interests you, you can read the full article by clicking on the bottom-right link. It will open in your browser with all the site’s functionality.

…or for Flickr, see larger previews

Some feeds have very little or no text – they’re there for the images. You can view the images from cartoon feeds or a custom Flickr search in a larger format – still only a preview! – if the feed supports it.

See the tips & wizards page for more custom searches.

reorder feeds by dragging

You can easily reorder the main feed list by dragging a feed by its dotted drag handle on the right. Just keep the mouse over the feeds while dragging. The list of feeds in the Sources-tab will be updated automatically. Make sure you *save* the changes you made there.

auto-refresh and quick manual refresh

When you loaded up the .telexer with several feeds, you can edit their refresh times in such a way that you not get all their notifications in one go. You can check on it’s refresh status by rolling your mouse over the feed’s title. The status line will display the time till next refresh moment. If a feed for some reason didn’t load, or if you’re impatient, you can manually refresh the feed by clicking the orange status LED (which is grey for a not-loaded feed, and blinks when loading).

feedback on loading errors

Well, sometimes things go wrong… The status line will tell you that some error occured, and you can get more info on that error ar the Sources tab. Click on the item that has a red exclamation-mark, and see what probably caused the problem. If you have a temporarily slow connection, try the manual refresh. And if you simply have no connection at all, the orange application icon in the window handle bar will have turned grey.

This makes it a snap to have your .telexer running smoothly.