reader

Transcend has announced the P8, a stylish new all-in-one multiformat memory card reader. The P8 is a compact USB 2.0 card reader with rounded edges and a streamlined design.

All four of the P8's card slots are clearly labeled to avoid confusion. The P8 accepts most formats including CF, SD, SDHC, MMC, MMCplus, RS-MMC, MMCmobile, microSD(with adapter), and the Memory Stick series of cards. It has support for high-speed USMA transfer mode.

It is currently available for about $20, and it comes in white and black.

It may be the scaled-down version, but Feed Editor Lite's straightforward interface offers just the right amount of options for creating and managing RSS feeds and podcasts.

The program's wizard to create a new RSS feed gets you off to the right start. The wizard was easy to understand, but also included a help feature to keep you covered. The wizard gives you two options for creating feeds--standard RSS or standard podcast. After that, simply enter a name, brief description, and the source URL in the appropriate field. Once we got all of that information into place, we … Read more

Despite an initially intimidating interface, this RSS feed reader turned out to be very simple to use. Webu launches a no-frills but very functional interface with a series of buttons for adding and deleting news feeds and keywords for narrowing feed hits. Helpful informational windows pop up on first launch to help guide the new user.

This application performed well in our tests, responding promptly to our clicks. It quickly checked selected feeds for our user-defined topics, and adding and deleting feeds and keywords was a snap. We liked that we could choose to check RSS feeds or Web pages, … Read more

In an effort to make Google Reader more approachable, Google has put out a series of help videos that show people how to use it. There are only two clips to start out with (posted below) which cover basics like adding and reading feeds, and using the tool's sharing features. Google says future videos will cover some of the more advanced features.

Google's efforts are notably overshadowed by YouTube users who have taken it upon themselves to create screencasts similar to the ones made for last year's YouTube help video challenge. How-to site ExpertVillage in particular has 16 different clips, while Web guru Ed Dale has put together a three-part, half-hour series about how to use it.

One thing to note is that Google's videos cover some of the changes made since the redesign in early December. See also our Newbie's Guide for Google Reader, which despite being written in late 2007 is still remarkably up to date.

I've put the second how-to video after the break.… Read more

The unobtrusive design of this free Firefox add-on to read Live Bookmarks scored points with us, as did RSS Ticker's easy customization.

The program adds a slender feed bar right below your status bar, but through the Options menu you can choose to place it below your bookmarks toolbar. The Options menu also lets you change the feed update frequency, and the ticker speed. The black on white text was easy to read, and didn't interfere with our Web viewing. Likewise, the scrolling headlines were inconspicuous. We were able to easily add and remove feeds by simply selecting … Read more

You can't always judge an e-book reader by its cover--or at least its model name. If you've been perusing gadget blogs in recent days you may have noticed that another e-book reader, the eSlick, from Foxit Software, has entered the digital reader fray.

The eSlick's claim to fame is that when it's released early next year, it'll be cheaper than the Amazon Kindle or any Sony Reader. Whether it will be slicker is another story, as a couple of bloggers have opined that it's not the foxiest looking reader in the world.

The eSlick, … Read more

The house I live in now is truly my dream home, and a lot of that is thanks to the kitchen. We're lucky enough to have a semiopen floor plan: our spacious kitchen opens into the family room; a swinging door separates the kitchen from the formal dining room. So the kitchen is truly the heart of our home, the place where we gather with friends and cook while the kids play nearby.

I think of the kitchen as mission control in our house, and AT&T's HomeManager device could be a smart addition to our central … Read more

To put it gently, Adobe Reader is a real pain in the hindquarters. It's monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features most users will hardly ever need. Foxit PDF Reader 3.0 kills the bloat and throws in some useful features, such as multimedia support and content-sharing options, while still allowing you to quickly access your PDFs.

The interface mimics Adobe's, so you won't have to change your reading habits. In our test, the text readability was similar. The small program starts surprisingly fast compared with Adobe. You might need to fiddle a bit to … Read more

Classics is a digital reading app that gives you access to more than 20 preset books in an inviting, intuitive interface. When you open Classics, you see a 3D wooden bookshelf with neatly shelved virtual books--all classic, public-domain titles such as "Call of the Wild," "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," the "Illiad," and "20,000 Leagues under the Sea." You can scroll through the bookshelf by flicking up and down, and red bookmarks show which books you've started as well as your progress (the shorter the bookmark, the further you've … Read more