Smart Newsreader

Smart NewsReader -- Intel's Smart NewsReader is primarily a rudimentary news reader with two advanced features -- intelligent agent technology that ranks threads according to your interests and 'objectify' capabilities which allow you to launch apps based on information found in news articles. With the information evaluation feature, you tell the agent which articles interest you and which don't. With as little as 50 feedback articles, the agent can predict and sort the articles that are most likely to meet your interests. Objectification is another feature designed to make the laborious task of traversing newsgroups easier. With this feature, the Smart NewsReader parses the body of an article and looks for words or objects like dates, URLs, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. By double clicking on these objects, the news reader will automatically launch your calendar, web browser, mail, or rolodex clients. While these are both great features that should be included in more news readers, the other features in Smart NewsReader just don't measure up to the competition. The interface is downright unattractive and counter-intuitive. Features like encryption capabilities, UUdecoding (although external multimedia viewers can be launched), offline/online newsreading, right mouse button functionality, and quick purging are noticeably absent. In addition, the news reader is extremely slow relative to the better newsreaders on the market (Agent, News Xpress, and WinVN for example). Still, Smart NewsReader does offer advanced kill list support, multimedia mapping, and multiple sorting key features in addition to the two advanced capabilities identified above. While Smart NewsReader may not be everyone's idea of the perfect news reader, it does offer some impressive features not found in other clients. For those looking for an news reader that can read your mind, Smart NewsReader is the closest app currently available. Pros: Objectify and information evaluation features, advanced kill list support, multimedia mapping Cons: Slow, unattractive interface, could be more intuitive, lacks critical features New: No obvious New features in v1.33 Beta Version Reviewed: 1.33 Beta Date of Review: 6/23/96 Reviewer: Forrest Stroud apps conference Main Menu