Over the past few years, RSS and Atom feeds have grown exponentially in popularity.  Almost every major website has at least one feed available while many, including sites such as MSNBC, CNN and other news sites, have multiple feeds available.  If Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! (a very small site compared to those) is any indication, RSS and Atom feeds will continue to grow in popularity.

Spb Software House has jumped into the RSS/Atom feed application furry with their latest application, Spb Insight.  This new and exciting application offers users the ability to subscribe to these feeds, have full offline reading including pictures, create templates for sites, and has an extensive online catalog of feeds available to you so you do not have to know the feeds direct URL.  While Spb Insight has room to grow, it is a well rounded application and provides quick and easy information to users from an almost limitless amount of information available on the Internet today.

Spb Insight is installed via ActiveSync and requires approximately 1.5MB of storage space on your device.  The application can be installed on a Storage Card or can be installed in your device's main memory.  After the installation is completed, the installation prompts you to indicate where you wish your content information to be stored.  I recommend that you have this information stored on a Storage Card as this dynamic aspect of the application can grow rapidly depending on the number of feeds you subscribe too.  Additionally, Insight can be configured to using only free network access such as ActiveSync or WiFi connections to update your feeds or can be configured to use your devices GPRS or EDGE connection to update.  If you have a data plan with your cellular provider, this ability to limit such connectivity from the application is a good way to control costs yet still be able to update your feeds.

Figure 1:  Configuring Spb Insight on Where to Store Content Information

Figure 2:  Configure Spb Insight to Only Use Free Connections to Update Your Content

Once Insight is installed and configured, content needs to be subscribed to from the application.  To do this, tap on the New soft key and determine how you want to subscribe:  Via Spb's Online Catalog, a RSS/Atom feed URL, an OPML file, searching for feeds or via a local template you have stored on your device.  The Online Catalog is the quickest and most accurate way to subscribe to feeds.  The catalog, which is downloaded by your device and is present to you as category folders.  By clicking on the folders, the available channels in that category are displayed and can be checked to subscribe to them.  The Online Catalog is primarily based on sites submitting information to Spb or by users submitting them.  You can recommend a RSS/Atom feed to Spb by going to the Spb Insight site at http://www.spbinsight.com.  Once you select the content you wish to subscribe to, click Finish and the main display of Insight is shown.  Depending on how you have the application configured, Insight can begin to automatically download the content of the subscribed content, making it available immediately. 

Figure 3:  The Online Catalog of Spb Insight Makes Subscribing to Content Easy

Figure 4:  The Spb Insight Main Display as Content is Downloaded to Your Device

One of the unique and powerful features of Insight is the search feature.  If you don't know a sites feed URL or cannot find it in the Online Catalog, using the search function allows you to do a keyword search for content.  The search function queries a backend server at Spb and displays feeds that have that keyword in them.  Once the display results are shown, you can subscribe to the available feeds with that keyword in them just as you do from the Online Catalog.  By using the search function, you are able to find content that is more difficult to find, especially from sites that are not necessarily main stream.

Figure 5:  The Search Function Allows You to Search via Keywords....

Figure 6:  Then Subscribe to Content That May be Difficult to Find

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