RealTime

Editing News Feeds

We've received some feedback that people are wanting to configure ALL of the feeds they get in the client - including the default news feeds.  User's were have apparently been a little frustrated about not being able to adjust the news feeds that are showing up in the client from the Feed settings page on the site.  Well we hear you and we are working to improve this in our next release.  That said, here's how you edit your news feeds today:

Step 1: Go to your RealTime menu (left click on the RealTime logo on the LEFT of the toolbar)
Step 2: Select OPTIONS (you can also do this by right clicking on the RealTime icon in your system tray)
Step 3: Select HEADLINES from the column of icons in the options screen
Step 4: Hit the CONFIGURE HEADLINE CATEGORIES button under the HEADLINE CATEGORY section
Step 5: Select or de-select any news feeds you'd like from that list

Hope that helps and please keep the feedback coming.

Screen Saver Tip

So you may or may not have noticed that not all of your feed or news items seem to be displaying themselves in our Screen Saver mode.  This is intentional and not a bug as the default setting on the RealTime screen saver is to only display feed or news items that have pictures associated with them.  That said, if you'd like to see ALL of your items rotate through screen saver here's what you do:

- Click on the RealTime Beta button (its the logo button on the left of the client).
- Select OPTIONS
- Select the SCREEN SAVER icon from the menu
- UNCHECK the box labeled "only display headlines with images within screen saver"

Then restart your client (right click on the RealTime icon in your system tray and Exit RealTime - then restart the program by double clicking on the desktop icon or via the start menu).

CNET's Web 2.0 Blog Review - 9/27/2006

From Rafe Needleman Web 2.0 blog comes our latest review.  Rafe's review points out some very key differences between RealTime and some of the other RSS readers out there.  The main one being that when we built RealTime we intentionally chose to optimize the product from an ease of use perspective.  As our key goal with the product was to make RSS easy for all the user's out there who would use it, but were perhaps a bit initimidated by other applications that were designed for more hardcore power users.  With probably the best quote from Rafe's review being:

RealTime's got most other feed recognizers trumped on ease of use.

Click here to read Rafe's full review which fairly explains the spectrum of products out there and where he feels RealTime fits within it.

PC World's Techlog - 9/26/2006

Click here to read Harry McCracken's review of RealTime.   Harry's post is quite fair and as a user who  identifies themself as someone who is aware of RSS, but does not have an RSS reader his comments are a fair representation of what the vast majority of non-RSS user's might experience today.  With his closing quote being a great summary of his initial experience:

"RealTime does look reasonably nifty, and appropriately low-key--and since I don't yet have an RSS reader of choice (unless you count My Yahoo), I'm going to live with it for awhile..."

Here's hoping the product grows on you Harry.

The 360 Post about RealTime's Business Model

Here's an interesting article from The 360 which takes a very different angle in reviewing RealTime.  Click here to read Susan's post about RealTime's business model.  I should note this article is aimed more at the advertisers, but fairly points out that our product is supported by web advertising. 

One thing I should point out, however, is that RSS is really the core technology that enables us to now "stream" text based news services down to the end user and a big reason why RealNetworks chose to get into the market now is the fact that RSS is a technology still in the very early stages of adoption.