RSS Overload Strategies

I've been using SharpReader for a while now to track/read RSS feeds from a few dozen blogs.  Works well. But I'm finding it hard to keep up all the new feeds.  Here one take on how to deal with the firehouse of incoming information:

Roland Tanglao's Weblog: My RSS Overload Strategy that I developed after the BloggerCon III Overload Session

Unauthorized MSN Desktop Search Screenshots Available

Is Microsoft feeling a little left out of buzz about new desktop search tools? Maybe.

Their own MSN Search blog went to some pains today to say that screenshots of a pre-release build of MSN's desktop search posted at Neowin.net were unauthorized. But the Microsoft blog post still included a convenient link right to the screenshots for anyone curious.

The screenshots do look very promising -- certainly no other company is better positioned to& integrate searching into applications like Explorer, IE, Outlook, etc. -- and it's good to hear that they're still hoping to get a beta out the door before year's end.

New Beta for X1 Desktop Search

A beta of the upcoming version 5 for desktop search program X1 was just released.  Lots of improvements to the search options, user interface, integration with other programs, and overall performance (check out this list). 

Feature-wise, the beta addresses many of the shortcomings I've mentioned in posts over the last couple months about X1 and competing products like Copernic Desktop Search and Google Desktop Search.

With so much competition -- and Microsoft supposedly poised to deliver its own MSN-branded destkop search utility -- X1's enhancements couldn't come at a better time.  But at least two more things still need to be done:

• X1 needs to lower it's price. I'm willing to pay for useful software, but my guess is that X1 needs to cut is $74.95 price about in half if it wants to grow (or even just keep) its share of the market, especially when some serious competitors are totally free.

• X1 needs to drop its constant "phone home" anti-piracy approach.  Even if X1's activity is totally benign and respects users' privacy, the company is going to have waste a lot of time and effort explaining that to customers. Reviewers will continue to bang X1 on this issue too.  Whatever value X1 gets from this offset by lost goodwill and trust.  Instead, X1 has a golden opportunity: by flipping its policy and becoming a champion of user privacy, X1 can position itself as distinct from for-free competitors who make their money by pushing advertisements to their users or who gather and re-sell user activity statistics.