A NetNewsWire 3.0 (pre-beta) video walk-through

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has a nice 3 – 5 minute video walk-through of the new features in the next version of NetNewsWire. After watching this video, I’m pretty fired up for version 3.0.

I’ve been using version 2.x since 2005 and it is the best RSS reader out there. Frankly, I can’t recommend it enough…if you’re a Mac user. Unfortunately, NetNewsWire is not available for Windows. NewsGator – the company that bought NetNewsWire last year – sells a Windows RSS reader named FeedDemon but it doesn’t even come close to NetNewsWire (the last time I used FeedDemon was back in July 2006 so it may have gotten better).

Anyways, here are some of the new features: (see Brent Simmons’ blog for the full list and descriptions)

• Spotlight searching
• Full Screen Mode
• Tabs with thumbnails and animation
• Feed ‘Cover Art’
• Ability to choose a folder when subscribing to a feed

Btw, Brent Simmons is the creator of NetNewsWire. His company, Ranchero Software, was acquired by NewsGator in 2005.

Companies that sell your email address

I stumbled upon a post on Eric Lundt’s blog (co-founder & CTO of FeedBurner) where he listed a handful of companies that have sold his email addy without his consent. Since we all HATE spammers and those that sell our email addresses, I thought I’d pass along Eric’s findings:

• Datek, which merged with Ameritrade in 2002 and is now TD Ameritrade
• United Airlines. I’ve created multiple email addresses for United and received spam on all of them
• Micro Center, the electronic store
• Vindigo. I no longer use their service.
• Network Solutions. That gives you confidence, eh?
• 1-800-Flowers

I started to do the same thing about 6 months ago: I create a specific email address for each company I give it to, which allows me to identify which companies are selling my email addy to the f’ing spammers (I highly recommend doing the same). Sometimes, I get lazy and don’t feel like creating a new address when I’m in the middle of registering with a website. During these times, I provide my generic ’spammable’ email.

In the past 6 or so months, the only company that has sold my address is:

• Accuquote (they aggregate quotes from various life insurance companies)

Feel free to post a comment if other companies have sold your email address.

Btw, if you’re already getting spammed on your primary email account, check out my previous post on ‘How to stop spam email.’