JetBrains(TM), Inc. today announced the
general availability of its first consumer-oriented product, Omea Reader. The
program, free through December, is an intelligently designed tool to find,
prioritize, display and manage information supplied through RSS and ATOM news
feeds, do the same for news groups, and keep the user’s web browser bookmarks
updated.
RSS, a term now widely accepted as standing for “Really Simple
Syndication,” is used by companies, “bloggers,” news sites and other content
providers to reach audiences that select them. They are increasingly popular,
in part because they eliminate the time-wasting spam of traditional email
channels. The total number of RSS feeds now numbers in the millions and is
growing quickly.
Omea Reader helps users cope with “info-smog,” where the sheer density of
information obscures what a user is looking for. The program serves as a very
convenient approach to monitor breaking news in RSS/ATOM feeds and manage
newsgroup feeds, saving users enormous amounts of “seek time.”
“Like other JetBrains products, Omea Reader originally came about as a way
to meet our own needs internally,” said Eugene Belyaev, President and Chief
Technology Officer at JetBrains. “It is part of a larger, more general project
we undertook to help us manage the torrents of information we all have to deal
with as participants in the information economy. Since we are hardly alone in
the information deluge, it made sense to make these tools available to a wider
audience.”
RSS and newsgroup readers have been around for some time, but lack the
robust information management capability that makes Omea Reader a superior
tool in the face of increasing information overload. For example, it allows
users to categorize on-line information resources in the ways most useful to
them, rather than having to flip back and forth between different programs in
an effort to coordinate multiple streams of information. A single click brings
the user to any useful category of information, even when it comes from a mix
of sources, and a unique “Clippings” feature helps create excerpts from the
larger information flow that users can access, search, index or link to other
clips or working documents. The “I know I saw it somewhere” sinking feeling is
eliminated.
Similarly, most users have web browser bookmark collections that rapidly
fall out of date. Omea Reader checks a user’s web browser bookmarks and
informs them when the site content has changed. Omea Reader also detects and
updates redirected web addresses, alerts users to dead links and provides them
with the last version of the web-page.
Omea Reader’s built-in NNTP newsgroup reader comes with full support for
both reading and posting messages to newsgroups, support for attachments, and
inline display of pictures. Omea Reader also provides a convenient threaded
view so users can easily track comments throughout a discussion.
Omea Reader utilizes all features of the HTTP protocol to conserve
bandwidth, addressing one of the key issues of readers overall. When supported
by the server, it also uses compression to further reduce bandwidth demands,
which have become a problem for many RSS/ATOM publishers. An automatic
subscription wizard keeps users in touch with feeds they want without wasting
space, time or bandwidth.
As a limited time offer, until January 1st, 2005, JetBrains Omea Reader
will be available for free at http://www.jetbrains.com/omea_reader .
