RSS Gators

Applications that collect data from RSS-compliant sites are called RSS readers or “aggregators.” RSSOwl is such an application. RSSOwl lets you gather, organize, update, and store information from any compliant source in a convenient, easy to use interface, save selected information in various formats for offline viewing and sharing, and much more. It’s easy to configure, available in many many languages and the best of all: It’s platform-independent.

The owl is a traditional symbol of wisdom, and a quiet, efficient hunter. You’ll find RSSOwl’s “big eyes” a big help when scanning the Web’s vast array of RSS sources.

RSSOwl has 4 versions for operation systems: RSSOwl Windows, RSSOwl Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel) , RSSOwl Linux (32 Bit), RSSOwl Linux (64 Bit).

Functions of RSSOWL:

Import your favorite newsfeeds using the OPML format. Most newsreaders support the export of newsfeeds via OPML, making it very easy to switch to RSSOwl and have your bookmarked favorites inside RSSOwl.

Bookmark your favorite newsfeeds in nested categories. Set properties like “auto-update-interval”, “open on startup” or “reload on startup”.
RSSOwl helps you finding a suitable title for your favorites. Just click the “Grab title from newsfeed” button and RSSOwl will scan the newsfeed for the title and use it for the new favorite.

Import Blogrolls into RSSOwl. A Blogroll is a file that contains newsfeeds. Popular services like Bloglines allow to manage and share Blogrolls. Synchronize the list of Newsfeeds in RSSOwl.

Switch on the internal browser to read news that contain HTML. Some newsfeeds use this kind of technique to include images and links.

Select a newsfeed, a single news or an entire category of newsfeeds to export the content into one of the formats PDF, RTF or HTML. When exporting news into PDF, RSSOwl will create bookmarks showing the titles of all news. These are very helpfull when searching for a particular news inside the PDF document.

RSSOwl’s internal panels are highly customizable. Choose between a 2-column and a 3-column layout. Hide and restore the tree containing all favorites and the quickview box. Maximize the tabfolder with a single click in order to view a website inside the internal browser with full size.

A lot of search-options make RSSOwl a powerful application to search inside a newsfeed or an entire category. The boolean operators “and”, “or” and “not” may be combined with the search-term. Common options to only match a whole word, regard case-sensitivity or to use regular expressions are allowed. Results are displayed in the tabfolder and each keyword is highlighted inside the newstext.

The integrated newsfeed-search engine allows to search for newsfeeds by keyword. Simply enter words like “News” or “Linux” and press the search button. Soon the engine will give out a list of newsfeeds. It is also possible to restrict the search to only match newsfeeds that have the same language that RSSOwl has set. Once the search has finished, import all of them into any category with a single click.

Tired of copying and pasting newsfeeds out of a website into your newsreader? Simply enter the website containing links to newsfeeds into the feed-discovery and RSSOwl will show all the newsfeeds it has found. Import them into any category with a single click. Or enter the URL to an OPML file and gain access to its newsfeeds – it’s a breeze!

The integrated feedvalidator allows to check the validity of a newsfeed. Any error or warning is shown inside the validator, together with the line-number. This feature makes the perfect tool for bloggers as they’re able to test their newsfeeds. RSSOwl provides support for RSS 0.91, 0.92 and 2.0 straight “out of the box”.

RSSOwl is highly customizable. “Preferences” allow to change fonts, languages, colors, hotkeys and a lot more. Export settings into a file to import them into RSSOwl on a different computer. Switch fonts or make yourself comfortable with RSSOwl by choosing one of the 29 languages available.

Download RSSOwl for (windows, MAC OS X and linux versions as free rss reader)