Here’s a first look at Inquisitor 2.0. More details on this later.

I am pleased to announce the immediate release of NewsFire 1.2. NewsFire 1.2 represents a solid evolution of the user experience of NewsFire with improved smart group capabilities, a redesigned grouping interface, substantially faster performance, Spotlight search support, and dozens of tweaks to elevate the experience (release notes). This release lays a solid foundation for the future of this continuously improving application.

NewsFire 1.2 (Beta 5) is now available. Beta 5 contains only minor bug fixes and tweaks over Beta 4.

A couple of days ago I changed the design of this blog, and I just wanted to send out some props to the creators of this kick-ass theme. DWBlog is now using the rdc 0.7 WordPress theme created by CSS geniuses Jon Roobottom and Paul Lloyd. Thanks guys, you rock!

As fantastic as the iPod nano appears to be, my only question is why Apple has abandoned the mini (supposedly the best-selling iPod) and, more importantly, why there is again not a single iPod in the lineup that doesn’t become irreparably scratched when used. When the mini came out, I thought Apple had learnt the lesson that shiny metal and plastic looks great for about a day. Thanks to its anodized exterior, my iPod mini is the only iPod I own that has kept its good looks. I’m pretty certain the nano won’t be as robust.

NewsFire 1.2 (Beta 4) is now available and contains the following enhancements over Beta 3:
– improved status bar display when NewsFire is set to open articles in the browser directly
– improved support for some previously invalid feeds
– groups are properly sorted in the smart group rules interface
– fix to prevent cyclical smart group issues
– feed hiding (though, I am personally unconvinced of the need for this feature)

NewsFire 1.2 (Beta 3) is now available and contains the following enhancements over Beta 2:
– fix for validation issues in Beta 2
– corrected performance issue with marking all feeds as read
– fix for occasional Spotlight misbehavior
– fix for rare incorrect ordering in smart feeds

NewsFire 1.2 (Beta 2) is now available and contains the following enhancements over Beta 1:
– added option to cluster groups
– corrected performance issue with marking feeds as read
– improved feed discovery (NewsFire finally looks at <link> tags)
– fixed ‘add to group’ menu inconsistency
– NewsFire now tolerates ‘windows-1252’ and ‘MacRoman’ encoded feeds

I’ve teased you all for long enough – NewsFire 1.2 (Beta 1) is now available for your enjoyment. All the changes are listed on the release notes page. The executive summary is this: it’s faster, it’s prettier, and it’s got a whole lot of little tweaks to elevate the experience.

This is, of course, a beta. Be prepared to run into bugs and please report those bugs! Please note that 1.2 raises the base requirements to Mac OS X 10.3.9, as it relies heavily on the Safari technologies that are in the 10.3.9 release. Of course, it works great with OS X 10.4.