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Tue, 22 Oct 2002

News Aggregators

If you have a lot of web sites that you visit regularly, a news aggregator can save you time and bring you the latest news instantly.



Many web sites that are updated frequently, including MacMegasite, provide a RSS feed with the latest headlines. A news aggregator checks RSS feeds regularly and informs you when any new stories are available. In this article I will cover three popular news aggregators for Mac OS X.



SlashDock is a lightweight aggregator that notifies you in the dock when any site is updated, and lists the latest headlines from each site in a dock menu. If you want something small, fast, and efficient, you'll like SlashDock.



NetNewsWire Lite is probably the most popular and will appeal to most users. It presents a familiar 3-pane interface with a list of your subscribed sites on the left, the headlines from the selected site on the top, and a summary of the selected story (if available) at the bottom. It also shows the number of new stories in the dock icon.







Radio Userland is a lot more than a news aggregator. It's also a publishing tool for writing your own weblog and a scripting platform with an integrated database for developing web-based services and applications. You connect to it with your web browser to view the news aggregator and publish your weblog. Clicking the post button next to any item in the news aggregator will add it to your weblog.



MacMegasite staff member Adam Atlas is also planning a public release of News Tracker, which he demonstrated at MacHack 17, winning first place in the Yoot division and second place overall in the hack contest.



You can find news feeds to subscribe to at syndic8.com. MacMegasite's RSS feed is available at http://www.macmegasite.com/backend.php.

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OpenLink Software and Sybase deliver ODBC for Mac OS X

New Single-Tier Sybase Driver for ODBC provides transparent access to

Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise from Mac OS X applications.



Burlington, Mass. - October 23, 2002 - OpenLink Software, Inc., industry

and technology leader in the development and deployment of secure,

high-performance database connectivity drivers for ODBC™ and JDBC™,

announced today the incorporation of OpenLink's industry-acclaimed,

high-performance Single-Tier Driver for ODBC, for Sybase∆ into its Adaptive

Server∆ Enterprise (ASE) for Mac OS X.



"The combined efforts of these two technology leaders have resulted in the

delivery of a critical and powerful piece of enterprise application

development infrastructure for the Mac OS X platform," said Andrew Hill,

director of technology evangelism at OpenLink Software. "ODBC connectivity

for Sybase ASE ensures that Mac OS X developers have a standards-compliant

mechanism for connecting to any Sybase database engine regardless of host

operating system," he added.



The new Single-Tier Sybase Driver for ODBC provides connectivity to Sybase

ASE 12.5.x from ODBC compliant Cocoa-, Carbon- and Darwin-based

applications, running on Mac OS X 10.1.x or 10.2.x (Jaguar). It enables Mac

application vendors and developers to easily migrate to Sybase ASE, without

having to re-write the applications that use ODBC connectivity. In

addition, other application vendors and developers whose applications use

ODBC and run on NT or Unix will find a high degree of ODBC compatibility

using ASE on Mac OS X. The Single-Tier Sybase Driver for ODBC installs with

OpenLink's Aqua-based ODBC Administrator - which has built-in server

discovery, enabled by Rendezvous technology, that simplifies the task of

locating and connecting to Rendezvous-enabled instances of Adaptive Server

Enterprise - and other ODBC infrastructure components.



"Sybase is excited to be working with OpenLink to deliver a robust

developer solution for Mac OS X," said Steve Olson, technical director of

engineering at Sybase. "Sybase is committed to providing an open

architecture that bridges all technology platforms and allows everything to

work together, preserving existing infrastructure investments and improving

efficiency. Our newest release on Mac OS X speaks directly to that

commitment."



About OpenLink Software



OpenLink Software is a privately held software company with offices in the

U.S.A., United Kingdom, France, Malaysia, Nigeria and Bulgaria. It has been

the leading provider and technology innovator in the database connectivity

driver market since 1993. Its products are currently used by over 10,000

companies world-wide for post-pilot and post-evaluation ODBC and JDBC based

solutions.



Additional information on OpenLink Software can be obtained from the Web

site, http://www.openlinksw.com.



About Sybase, Inc.



Sybase is the enterprise infrastructure company that bridges heterogeneous

technologies. With industry-leading Enterprise Portal (EP), mobile and

wireless solutions, essential integration products, and high performance

database management systems, Sybase is one of the largest independent

software companies in the world. For more information, visit the Sybase Web

site: http://www.sybase.com.

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NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.2b2

Ranchero Software has released an upgrade to their RSS news reader, NetNewsWire Lite, which enhances its efficiency and reduces the load it puts on the sites it reads.

NetNewsWire is an easy-to-use RSS news reader for web sites. It uses a familiar three-paned interface -- like that of Outlook Express or Mailsmith -- to display websites and their news. Made with Cocoa! More news, less junk. Faster.



What's New:

Version 1.0.2b2 adds the following:



  • Reduces bandwidth consumption by supporting ETag and Last-Modified headers as detailed here.

  • When you do a manual refresh all, the automatic refresh clock is now reset, which also helps reduce bandwidth consumption.

  • Changed the default subscriptions to include only large sites—no weblogs—so as not to cause extra bandwidth charges to people paying for their sites out of their own pocket.

  • Fixed a mysterious crash-in-background bug. (There may be more of these, or there may not be.)

  • Added some feeds to the Sites Drawer.



NetNewsWire Lite can be downloaded from Ranchero Software.

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