Microsoft Launches Desktop Feed Reader

Feeds are drastically changing the way we get information. In Web 2.0 we will see it become a standard.

Got to agree. This one has a better feel than the Goog’s reader though it is not exactly desktop based.

There’s just one problem. You can’t install Max on a non-NTFS filesystem. And I happen to have FAT32 since it’s much more Unix-friendly.

Now that is the bomb! I will without a doubt download this!

Wow, talk about HEAVY!

The interface is cool, however I was rather disappointed that this beta didn’t have support for the Common feed list. I have hundreds of feeds and the switching cost would be way to high for me.

This looks like ideas based on Lektora … the developer was snatched up by Microsoft a while ago and worked on the way IE7 renders feeds in the browser.

Why on earth will u want a news reader in a photo management tool. Unless MS is going to make MAX a general catalogging and viewer application, this feature is retarded.

I don’t get why they are lumping this together with a photo gallery program though. Wouldn’t it be better as a separate application?

Who the hell wants a feed reader on a photo management program? Am I the only one thinking WTF?
And 50+ megs for a feed reader?

I’ll stick with Picasa (3 megs download and doesn’t requiere a crufty .Net install) for my photos and Bloglines (no download) for my feeds.

Mycrosoft needs to spend some more time fixing their OS and not wasting it on useless projects like this one.

Hi,

Have no idea how to integrate the TechCrunch Feed on Max? I tried entering the FeedBurner Feed - i.e. http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch - but the Max reader couldnt pick it up?

Anyone got any ideas?

Cheers

it worked for me. weird.

Hey Mike and Help?,

Yeah when I added http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch it comes up with

“Max has trouble parsing that web feed. Make sure the URL you’re providing references a valid RSS or Atom feed”?

Any ideas?

Frederick

It should be noted that a big part of the 54 megabyte download is the .NET 3.0.

.NETv3 wouldn’t even install for me. Ugh. No digg.

I guess this makes sense if you want to pull in your Flickr feeds and organize your photos on the HD at the same time…but I agree, I won’t be using this for my daily feed reading!

Strange hybrid. I see no market demand for it. Task of feed reading is native for browser plugins. Get Opera 9 or Mozilla plugins for particular task of feed reading, or use online services. Microsoft Max looks like nice proof of a weird concept.

I don’t see this becoming a top feed reader, but we gotta introduce feeds wherever we can.

What if this isn’t actually a future product, but just a sandbox for testing different software running on the .Net v3 framework? I wouldn’t be surprised if this “product” is never actually released. Maybe these are simply features we’ll see in Vista? Or we’ll see a standalone feed reader, and standalone photo management tool?

Wait??? What are you saying is impossible? I think your comment is on Javascript/CSS handling.

In your podcast you had exec’s from Rojo, Attensa, and Bloglines…… all online RSS aggregators.

It’s only impossible to handle javascript and CSS if you want a secure product. If you allow raw CSS/javascript (on a serverside app) you’re going to open yourself to a whole class of cross site scripting attacks. In Rojo this was especially difficult because enabling javascript could have taken down the whole site due to XSS and adding a worm to other’s profiles. I’m sure bloglines, newsgator, and attensa would have similar issues.

That said these aren’t really applicable to clientside aggregators. You can create the content in a sandbox where the only issues you really have are DoS issues where you put javascript in an infinite loop……

That’s assuming you’re not using IE of course due to enhanced privs due to loading .html files off the local filesystem.

Kevin

One more comment……. The HTML capabilities in this feedreader are probably on par with FeedDemon and/or NetNewsWire and any other RSS aggregator that uses a browser control like Gecko, Webkit, or MSHTML to render HTML.

Kevin

A feed reader added to a photo viewing/sharing application? Doesn’t make sense. They should be separate apps.

The only way MAX will get to be used widely is it being included in Vista. That way MS will definately establish quite a market share.

its a shame Microcrap can’t pay their web designers more.
http://www.microsoft.com/max/ is a complete copy of http://home.cogeco.ca/~rklauncher/ (a Mac OS X dock clone).

and if you look at their blog, http://blogs.msdn.com/max/. You see, what happens when Microcrap designs something by themselves (Not copying).
What is it with Microcrap and Copying. How can billions of dollars not manage to hire creative people.

too big, too slow…not interested

This is super. At last a windows product which doesnt have a bad review on Techcrunch.

@Michael Arrington:

Interesting post, but could you please, please provide a link to the original sized screenshot for this “beautiful user interface”? And why not do this for all future posts?

Microsoft is doing some good stuff and releasing good freeware. Is this an attempt to strike back at opensource? I loved livewriter and visual C++ express and use both extensively.
Very interesting. I should blog this.

See, this is what should be in Media Center. Superb photo viewing, reading your favourite news sources etc. Imagine this being streamed to your main TV from your computer via MC or Front Row. I see no reason why a news reader shouldnt be a part of the ‘media center’ experience.

That was a great podcast you did a few months ago with all the feed reader execs, who was your co-host? To be somewhat frank, he sounds on top of his game.

On a more serious note, this desktop reader sounds pretty sweet! Do you have a link to a larger image of the layout/screen-shot? I want to see the beauty you describe in its layout, before I install it to check it out.

Man, Next microsoft will invent the text editor. coooooool!

They allready did that Frank…

Looks like another Microsoft knockoff. More leveraged bundled use MS or die crap. My Yahoo at least does not require 54 megs and Net 3.0, or even windows for that matter. I have been using My ‘customized’ Yahoo for a few months now and it is great–lets me customize the backdrop somewhat, set the number of columns, graphic content, etc.

WTP

Looks good but functionality? For example how do I open an article if I want to read more? Clicking, Double clicking, right-clicing all don’t work … at least not for me.

I will stick with my current feed reader. Simpler is better when using a feed reader.

I used to be a SharpReader fan, then I switched to Opera and briefly used it’s inbuilt RSS reader.

I’ll be using Max for a while I think. While it seems like a strange combination pitching RSS and photo sharing / annotating together, they are two tasks I squander my time on.

THE 54 Mgs is for the ASP.net 3.0, for those of you that actually work with ASP.net on your machines it is a nessecity to stay on top of the latest framework.

ASP.net 3.0 will be the new framework for Vista.

This is a very nice product though.

http://www.microsoft.com/max/j.....lias=share

I found a link with a gallery of how it actually looks. Very nicely done. I think it is more of a Gallery system than a RSS Reader. And It looks like they are actually just taking snippets of Vista and bringing them to XP for taste testing.

Maybe to scare Mac? I doubt they are doing this to compete with any other news readers.

I use Outlook and Live Mail to read RSS Feeds. My question is if they have 2 apps already why do they need the 3rd? Lol

ALSO I should note download took 10 Seconds due to Microsofts Uber, Pimped up Servers ^_-.

It is a pretty average tool, inefficient too. Typical of Microsoft technology.

nice, but i’m using windows 2003… so what im supposed to do?
i really cant understand why MS dont release a version for Windows 2003.

Wow. Look at all the FUD from *nix fanboys. No wonder people don’t want to try Linux; they don’t want to be associated with people like you.

Judge the software on the merits of the software, not the company or person that made it.

This is a very beautiful, very functional piece of software. It demonstrates the visual capacity of Aero and the functionality of the latest .Net framework. More importantly, it demonstrates that these technologies are compatible with Windows XP.

The reason for RSS feed capability in a Gallery program is because this program is eventually intended to function as a general-purpose casual internet program. Think about what normal people would use the internet for: email, news, sharing pics with friends/family, and family/personal blogs. This already does 2 of those functions, Outlook Express handles email, and Live Writer handles blogging. Between these 3 programs, MS is building a competitor to Apple’s iLife suite in the form of the Live Suite.

A competitor to iLife? Wheres the iDVD, iMovie or Garageband? Its clearly not a competitor to iLife, its MS trying to create a buzz for Vista by getting people talking about its new technologies.

I have installed this “Microsoft codename Max” program. The install takes quite a long time because it installs the .NET Framework 3 beta. This took several minutes to install.

The interface is very clear, and seems somewhat Mac-inspired. This is a good thing.

Feed discovery isn’t very good. I have entered the main web address of a popular blog, and Microsoft Max failed to find the feed. Other RSS readers, such as Rojo, automatically find the feed after I enter the web address.

For Microsoft Max, you have to enter the exact feed address.

The main function of Microsoft Max is not RSS reading, but photo sharing.

Unfortunately this has a shortcoming, too - you can only access someone’s shared photos only if he or she is online.

The Microsoft Max program seems a good start for something great, but right now it’s not so great.

Urr….ja. Well it looks nice, it discovered and displayed my photos quickly. For the unitiated to RSS readers on windows XP - Aunt Elvira in Oklahoma?- it might be nice to have - But because MAX can’t import OPML I rate it a waste of diskspace, a sub-optimal-min.

scrolling is a pain in the a**.
cannot switch fontsizes.
delete default feeds ? btw: where is the settings manager ? o-ohhh!
opml ? nope! - dead cow!

btw: needs registration for freaky passport - another dead cow!

oh and it can view photos and you can share them. well. i’m not leaning out of the window when i say: this is a stinking fish. does anybody eat that ?

Hey Micheal, I just read up about you in Business 2.0 Magazine lol. Care to share that cigar?

Buh! Apple have a soft like it, in microsoft, it seems that they didn’t put off the fotocopiers.

Let me see how good this reader is when compared to Feedreader.

I think its a slick looking interface, but I too disagree with the inclusion of a phoo app with the news reader. Maybe MS has some future undisclosed plans for the apps to work together, although i cant imagine any. I think its just a little too heavy for an RSS reader though. I use firefox but when i want to read a feed, id prefer to use flock. It integrates the best features of firefox with a rather nice RSS reader. then again …. i dont like rss feeds. oh well.

Stephen Rose:
Judging from the site you mentioned as a clone of the Max website, it appears as though that website has only been around since July 2006, whereas the max one has been around since some time in Fall of 2005. I’m afraid http://home.cog…ca/~rklauncher/ is the ripped off site!

RSS reader out of Max offering is surely good, makeing RSS the mainstream of media delivery mechanism.
The application shows the news nicely.
Photos can be shared, but News feeds can not be. This is biased, but will change soon. Go to http://mintr.com for news feeds that can be tagged and shared.

Well if you can’t enable windows updates (which I can’t b/c on work laptop) you can’t use this…

Damn shame I wanted to try it out

I hate ppl like Steven Rose who are just looking for a downside of Microsoft. He posts a link saying its a copycat of this. And… THe site has only been up 3 months!!! Max has been up 1 year, and how much longer in development? They have posts from 2004 on their blog! Steven wake up. Microsoft Max is orignial.

For especially thick people who don’t even want to try to understand what this is, here’s a brief explanation:

This application is meant as a technology demo for Windows Presentation Fundation, which is a part of .NET 3.0 framework.

Now, the reason why this was “rereleased” is because .NET 3.0 stepped into pre-production mile stone, ie Release Candidate 1 (RC1) and Max was updated to work with this version of the framework.

The RSS reader portion demonstraist quite impressive layout features of WPF and even more so the new font rendering capabilities. If you aren’t a Windows developer, you most likely wont “digg” this.

Thk You Alex.

*claps

Windows is doing great things. And On Another note, ASP.net 2.0 coding jobs are probably the only remote language left for web where a programmer can earn a good 3g a job without being outbidded by foreign companies in the indies whom prefer to work with open source solutions.

Thank God for Microsoft and their expensive SQL Database!

Hehe Microsoft charges too much!!

I found this useful and good reader.