Default RSS Reader

Wikipedia:

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.

More and more each day I use RSS feeds as a source of the information I get. In most cases it is news sites, but I also subscribe to some opinion and blog sites.

BlackJack has an RSS Reader included which can be found in "Start/Application". If you fire it up you will see that Cingular or Samsung have been nice enough to provide some default feeds. By default, the feeds have been set to an Update Method of passive. This simply means that you will have to click on Update when you want the reader to go out on the Internet and download new articles/postings.

Play around with the settings (ex. Passive or Automatic for the Update Method) and options as there are no real surprises that I see right away.

If your like me you will probably want to customize the feeds that this reader uses. There are a couple of ways to do this.

1. Using "Menu\Edit\New Feed" - Simply type in the URL of the feed.
2. Using ""Menu\Feed Search" - You might use this if you are not sure of the URL so you could try and search for your feed. I found that the couple of times I tried, that I got back too many results and their titles were not very helpful in helping me determine which feed I really wanted.
3. Edit the master feed file or import one - If you already have a list of feeds you already use elsewhere then this might be the option for you. Continue reading for details.

This RSS Reader uses a master file in the OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) format to store the URLs of your feeds. If you open up this file it is pretty self explanatory and you should have no problem figuring out how to edit it.

The file is located on your BlackJack in the directory \Program Files\RSS Reader\OPML File and is titled Default feed.opml. This OPML file appears to be a system file, so you will be unable to write over this file (either by deleting or copying over). Even if you could write to this file, there is no default way to edit this file directly on your BlackJack (side note - there are programs such as text editors that you can install on your device, but not that come with the BlackJack out-of-the-box) but this is not a problem.

Probably the easiest way of adding your own OPML file is to simply use the import function (Menu/OPML/Import). Using your ActiveSync, copy your OPML file to a directory of your choice (ex. My Documents) on your BlackJack and then using the import function, simply point to that file.

If you need some pointers about using ActiveSync to copy your OPML file, see my next posting Accessing Files on Your BlackJack .