Nick Kuh - Freelance iPhone and iPad Developer - Brighton, UK » Scoop

Scoop RSS Feed Reader: AIR Application

Nick Kuh — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:00:06 +0000

Scoop is a Google Reader AIR Application with offline/online Google Reader synchronization built in. It keeps track of multiple Google Reader accounts simultaneously.

Scoop is an AIR Application I developed with Adobe Flex Builder.

For anyone not familiar with RSS Feed Reader’s in summary they allow you to subscribe to multiple RSS news/blog feeds which you’ll find on tonnes and tonnes of websites and blogs in cyberspace. So, every time one of these websites posts a new story on their site the story or summary gets added to their site/page RSS feed – text, images and other media can also come through the feed.

You’ll see links to these RSS feeds on almost all the blog front pages out there and also on many information sites, whatever your interest – News sites, Sports sites, Celebrity Gossip sites etc etc

There’s a great browser based application called Google Reader which enables any google account holder (if you don’t have one already sign up for free here) to easily add any RSS feed to their Google Reader account and keeps track of all your subscribed feeds enabling you to quickly scan the latest scoops of your favorite sites every time you log into Google Reader.

Scoop enables users with or without Google Reader accounts to keep track of their favorite sites directly from the Desktop. It also synchronizes with your Google Reader account so any story you read in Scoop will update Google Reader’s read items, any feed you add or remove will also update with Google and vice verse.

There are added benefits to Scoop that a web browser can’t offer, here are just a few:

Scoop includes alerts so that you never miss a breaking story
Scoop caches all the stories it downloads enabling you to read them on the train when you don’t have an internet connection plus it auto updates Google Reader the next time you do connect to the net
Scoop is super quick – no waiting around for stories to download (it’s already cached them locally!)
Scoop enables you to enter multiple profiles/settings. This means that it can synchronize with multiple Google accounts (optional). I think this provides a great way to segregate different main interests. Ie, I’ve got an account which keeps track of my favorite Flash/Flex blogs but I’ve also set another one up to keep track of my favorite news feeds.

http://www.scoop.uk.com

Download and install Scoop

1,500 installs of Scoop in first 5 days!

Nick Kuh — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:29:20 +0000

My first freeware application – Scoop – got added to the Adobe AIR Marketplace 5 days ago. I just checked the latest download/install figures from Adobe and there have been almost 1,500 installations of the software made since it got launched on the Adobe site just 5 days ago!

I’ve had a tonne of feedback for this Google Reader online/offline desktop app in the last week – some good and some constructive but what certainly seems clear is that a lot of people see the benefits of using an app like this that can make offline google reading / tagging/ starring possible

I’m planning to implement a whole bunch of requested features over the next few weeks/months depending on how much free time I get

Scoop Beta (v0.25) just launched

Nick Kuh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:14:01 +0000

Have been pretty busy with work recently and haven’t had much spare time to work on my latest personal project but the first public beta of Scoop is finally here.

Scoop is an RSS Feed Reader Adobe Air Application with offline/online Google Reader syncronization built in. It keeps track of multiple Google Reader accounts simultaneously. Read, tag and star your scoops/posts on the train or wherever you like and Scoop will syncronize your changes with Google when you’re back online.

Current features included in this first Beta:

Offline mode – all new posts/feeds get stored locally + offline changes you make get syncronized with Google when you’re back online
Instant notifications of new scoops/posts from your favorite blogs and websites.
Popular Google Read keyboard short cuts like J/K for moving forwards and backwards through your reading lists.
Auto-update feature – the application will alert you when a new version of Scoop becomes available.