RSS Radar is more than just an RSS reader, it's a tool for tracking and reading news, where you can aggregate feeds, set notifications and alerts based on search queries.
About Feeds.
You can organize feeds into groups, and you can also reorder, update, or delete them.
News content is based on RSS feeds.
You can add a feed by an URL, select one from a curated list within app, or import using an OPML file.
Feeds and content are updated at intervals defined in the configuration.
As a result, News articles are displayed in the second section of the application. They are sorted by age.
Unread articles are marked with bold titles. We can display unread articles using the switch button at the top of list.
News content is located in the right section of the application. You can bookmark an article for later reading, share it or expand it.
Next are Queries.
The feature that distinguishes RSS Radar from other similar applications is the concept of Queries. A query in the application is an expression that combines keywords and operators. It is essentially a search query, similar to those used in search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
In the RSS Radar application, we can add a new query using the query builder. This is a tool that combines keywords and operators.
A query gives us a result in the form of found articles based on a search expression, again similar to search engines. Each found article has its own relevance and sentiment score.
The sentiment score is based on naive sentiment analysis. Currently, English, Spanish, French, German, and Serbian languages are supported.
The user has several options regarding Queries:
- You can declare a query as alert or notification by setting them with the provided buttons.
This means that the query-result potentially becomes part of the notification or alert.
- You can declare a query as a feed by setting them with this button.
This means the query becomes a feed, which can be followed in the Feed section. This enables us to aggregate and filter news according to specific criteria. For example, we can follow news by topic, event, or person.
Next is Import/Export data.
As mentioned earlier, we can exchange feeds via OPML files, like this for import and like this for export.
Another option is to Import/Export the content database as a zip archive. This allows the user to back up or exchange data with the RSS Radar application on another device. The most common use case is exchanging via cloud services such as OneDrive, iCloud Drive, or Google Drive.
Next is Configuration.
The user of the RSS Radar application has the option of changing the Theme (Black/Light) or the font size.
In the configuration form, the user can also change parameters that affect how the application works and what the results are. For example:
- Fetch frequency, which defines the feed update interval.
- ...Article age limit, which defines the time frame in which a notification is valid.
The user also has the option to clean up the content database. Cleaning will delete all articles that are older than the Index expiration threshold defined in the configuration.
RSS Radar is available on the Microsoft and App stores.