Truth and the Net

Truth and the Net. Wikipedia gets it wrong all the time. So do bloggers. But then, so do newspapers, magazines, TV and radio. The interesting thing about systems isn’t how they perform when they’re working to specification, it’s what happens when they fail.


Pimp out the Newsfire dock icon

Before and After photo

NewsFire has a slick, stripped-down interface — it’s one of the best looking mac apps out there. Too bad that the dock icon pales in comparison. That said, the internet always provides for your most whimsical fancies.

Enter Denis Radenkovic, who recognized the problem long ago and created a beautiful replacement icon that helps the program stand out in the dock. Visit his site to download the icon package.

There was also a comment offering a new badge colour — something more subtle than the bright green. I grabbed the four pngs out of the package and changed it to the blue. If you don’t feel like doing it yourself, download them from me. To install, just throw them into the package resource directory along with the replacement icon.

Beyond the program’s visual identity, it would be nice to have the ability to rename feeds after you add them. I’m also not a big fan of the floating sidebar behaviour, moving targets are bad. Everyone knows that the dock is a UI nightmare, we don’t need copycats. Other than that, I’ve been quite happy with Newsfire. It’s the first software RSS reader that I’ve stuck with for more than a day or two.