FreeRange
… So a day or two after my post announcing Viigo RSS Reader as the best free RSS Reader out there, I get an e-mail from Jon over at FreeRange notifying me the FreeRange RSS Reader for the Windows Mobile Smartphone has become completely free (it used to cost $25 a year).
I cross my fingers, hoping it would suck (so I didn’t have to write another post), and loaded it up onto my Windows Mobile Smartphone. Much to my dismay it turned out to be a FANTASTIC RSS Reader beating Viigo as my favorite! (Viigo is still a great RSS Reader, but FreeRange is better)
Screenshots of fullscreen mode using Darkness Theme, Auto-Image-Download Disabled
Here’s what sets FreeRange apart from the crowd:
- It is free.
- The navigation is incredible intuitive. Its really easy to navigate through Feeds and their posts ONLY using the D-Pad .. No more soft-keys, or back buttons. The soft-keys are used for some advanced features, but I normally never leave the D-Pad.
- FreeRange loads full post text (essentially the web page the RSS post links to) in its own viewer/web browser which is very fast and very lightweight.
- Syncing RSS Feeds is very fast.
- RSS article titles wrap so I can read the entire title before going on to read the full article.
- FreeRange supports FULLSCREEN mode! I feel like my viewable area has almost doubled.
- You can search all your Feeds for keywords (I am looking for a new HDTV, so now i can search all my Deal RSS feeds for the term “hdtv” and it’ll list all the relevant articles — to bad it doesn’t make them any more affordable!)
- You can “Clip” articles. If you find an article that interests you, “clip” it which copies the article to a special “Clips” folder in FreeRange. Pretty cool way to “remember” to read an article in full.
- FreeRange has an offline mode that lets you .. ok, I’m not even going to go into this. It’s pretty cool if frequently don’t have signal. (Planes, basement IT office, coal mines, etc.)
- Make your FreeRange account in the FreeRange client when you use it for the first time (ignore any warnings about limited use. Jon at FreeRange has assured me that FreeRange is free and fully functional).
- Manage your RSS Feeds using the Windows Mobile Smartphone client app or on www.FreeRangeInc.com’s web front end.
July 21st, 2008 at 11:03 pm
It appears that FreeRange is free only if you subscribe to 10 feeds or less. For $39.95 annually (!!) you can subscribe to an unlimited number of feeds and you get access to more advanced features, like support for Google Reader … although it is unclear if Google Reader support goes both ways (i.e., read status is updated in Google Reader when you read a post in FreeRange).
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:41 am
michaelhe,
You sure? im running the freely downloadable version and i have 30+ feeds. The President of FreeRange also said that its completely free now. I can confirm with him.
Have you tried it out, or are you getting this information from the documentation on the web site?
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Here is the e-mail I receive from Jon Maroney, FreeRangeInc CEO and Co-founder regarding the FreeRange RSS Reader:
If anyone runs into any limitations, please let me know so I can clarify the matter with Jon.
Thanks!
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
My apologies to David (and the FreeRange folks) for any confusion. I had found a couple places where they indicated FreeRange was $20-$25 a month and when I saw that their website showed a free version with the 10-feed limit plus the unlimited for $39+ I assumed that they had just introduced the free version.
It looks like a quality RSS feed reader. I’ve got it set up with more than 10 feeds on my device and it is working just fine.
Thanks for the tip!
August 4th, 2008 at 12:26 am
hey dave what exactly is this RSS reader? i also wanted to ask that i am on a family plan and we have unlimited messaging….would i be charged to use a rss reader?
August 4th, 2008 at 8:00 am
allstarr,
Sure - here’s what Wikipedia says RSS is:
An RSS Reader is a program that can read and manage these RSS Feeds. For instance, I want to be able to monitor the news on NYTimes.com easily from my phone, So I subscribe to the NYTimes’ RSS feed with free-range. I can now go into FreeRange and it will download the title, description and link to full article for all the new articles posted on NYTimes.com ..
RSS Readers use the DATA connection, so i recommend having UNLIMITED DATA when using an RSS Reader.
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Freerange is nice and much better than that crap that was default on my BJ2 but I have found that HubDog is even better in pretty much every way, Monk….
December 1st, 2008 at 11:29 am
Where can i get that darkness theme?
December 1st, 2008 at 12:22 pm
DarkRuler,
Its comes as one of the Default themes with FreeRange.. I can’t remember where the setting is exactly (i dont have my blackjack II sitting next to me right now) — but if you go into FreeRange’s settings and look around, its in there (along w a couple other options).
December 13th, 2008 at 10:47 am
How do I get it to stop asking me for permission every time I try to load something on it?
December 13th, 2008 at 11:51 am
daspollak,
I dont quite follow - what exactly are you doing when its asking your for permission?
December 14th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
It always asks for permission to use HTTP for communication. It is a pain to hit 10 times while the page is loading.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:25 pm
I must be doing something wrong. I have been using the free Freerange for months and it will only let me have up to 10 feeds.
January 4th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
niteflytes, hrmm .. Are you adding feeds via FreeRange’s web front end? I downloaded FreeRange from their web site and signed up with my personal email (so the admins dont know that I run this site to give me some sort of special treatment) and I have around 50+ feeds. I’ll contact the owners again and see if I they have any thoughts. In the meantime, you could try uninstalling your version of FreeRrange and re-downloading it and re-installing it.. ?
January 4th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Hi David, thanks for the quick reply.
I deleted & reinstalled and created a new Freerange account. The new one is allowing me to have more than 10 feeds. I still don’t have access to the advanced features though.
Thanks for your help, if you hadn’t posted about it being free I never would have known.