After talking about it for months, we finally have an alpha version of the next release of RSS Bandit codenamed Phoenix. There are two key new features in this release. The first is that we've finally finished off the last of the features related to downloading podcasts. If you go to View->Download Manager you can now view and manage pending downloads of podcasts/enclosures as shown in the screen shot below.

The second feature is one I'm sure will be appreciated by peoples who like reading their feeds from multiple computers but still want a desktop-based feed reader for a variety of reasons (e.g. reading feeds from a corporate intranet while roaming your feeds from the public Web). With this feature you can have multiple feed lists which are synchronized from a Web-based feed reader such as Google Reader or NewsGator Online while still keeping some feeds local. All you need to do is go to File->Syncronize Feeds and follow the steps as shown in the screen shots below

after selecting the option to synchronize feeds you are taken to a wizard which gives some options of feed sources to synchronize with and obtains your user credentials if necessary.

once you have given the wizard your information your feed list is synchronized and every action you make in RSS Bandit such as subscribing to new feeds, unsubscribing from existing feeds, renaming feeds or marking items as read is reflected in your Web-based feed reader of choice. The experience is intended to mirror the experience of using a desktop mail client in concert with a Web-based email service and it should work as expected.

in addition you can also use Google Reader's sharing feature (or NewsGator's clipping feature) directly from RSS Bandit as shown below

I'm sure you're wondering where you can download this version of RSS Bandit and try it out for yourself. Get it here. There are two files in the installer package, I suggest running setup.exe because that validates that you have the correct prerequisites to run the application and tells you where to get them otherwise.

Please note that this is alpha quality software so although it is intended to be fully functional (except for searching within your subscriptions) you should expect it to be buggy. If you have any problems feel free to file a bug on SourceForge or ask a question on our forum. 

PS: If you are an existing RSS Bandit user I'd suggest backing up your application data folder just in case. On a positive note, we've fixed dozens of bugs from previous versions.

Now Playing: Young Buck - Puff Puff Pass (ft. Ky-Mani Marley)