Mobiz LiveFeeder by Mobiz Technologies
It’s been a long time coming but I’ve finally had a play with the first RSS reader solution for S60 3rd that does nearly everything I want it to do in terms of providing me with automatically updated content on any screen! A few months ago I wrote a post about a reader that would allow you to scroll feed headlines on any screen on your device. I also noted however, that the reader itself was rather lacking in terms of function and features. I even made a wish back in January and while I did receive a few responses, none of the linked apps does what my wish asked for. Thanks to Mobiz my wish can finally be retired and I’m now a happy camper. :)
Mobiz LiveFeeder is an RSS Aggregator that is relatively feature-rich but more importantly it provides an extremely customizable ticker that scrolls feed headlines and remains in the foreground on any screen. It will scroll the headlines from one feed at a time and you can even manipulate the ticker and step forward/backward through the feeds it scrolls using hotkey shortcuts!
Setting up the app is very simple and the settings are split into three categories. The first is the connections tab where you will configure your desired access point. This tab also allows you to configure the connection timeout length along with the interval that LiveFeeder should use to automatically update your feeds when running.
The second tab contains your ticker configuration and includes settings such as height (normal or small), width (small, medium or wide), theme (includes four different color schemes) and scroll speed. You can also disable the ticker if you’d like to use the app as a standard auto-updating reader, and you can enable or disable hotkeys.
The last tab contains your Other settings which include enabling/disabling images, adjusting the font size of the reader and autostart settings.
Adding a feed to LiveFeeder couldn’t be easier. The Add a New Feed entry in the Options menu will allow you to select from Mobiz’s supplied feed list (via the services browser) or manually add a feed as seen below. Once your feed has been added, simply Hide the app with your desired feed highlighted and you will now see your ticker scrolling the content of your new feed.
Using the hotkey shortcuts you can quickly and easily adjust the size and placement of your ticker to place it exactly where you want it. Remember that while LiveFeeder is open in the background (with the ticker enabled) your ticker will be visible on all screens. I prefer to keep mine on the bottom just above the softkeys but here you can see some examples.
All in all, Mobiz LiveFeeder is an excellent app that suites my needs very well. Now I can scroll my stocks during the day with the feed set to update every 15 minutes and then with a simply hotkey press, switch over to Baseball scores in the evening set to update every hour. As with any app there are certainly some improvements that I would like to see. For example, it seems as though even full RSS feeds are clipped in the main LiveFeeder reader. While the app does allow you to quickly open the full stories in the Services browser, in the interest of time and simplicity I’d like to see them within the reader. It would also be nice if they would add a hotkey to bring the app to the forefront while on any screen Finally, I’d like to see an option to display the ticker only on the standby screen. From time to time it is nice to see my stocks scroll by while browsing the web, listening to internet radio etc but in most cases I really only pay attention to it on the standby screen.
I can’t yet comment on battery usage and in terms of RAM usage ActiveFile reports just over 1MB. I have noticed that LiveFeeder may leak a bit but I haven’t done enough testing to confirm. I am enjoying my free trial of this app however, and I think that I can already tell you it’s going to be a keeper. I definitely recommend that you head over to handango and check it out for yourself. The developer’s website seems to be down otherwise I would link you there, but I’ll update this post when I see it come back up.
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