Snackr Goes Open Source

A while back a little RSS feed tool was released called Snackr. The basic idea behind Snackr is that it takes your RSS feeds and scrolls them across your desktop, so you get a constant stream of updated news and can pick whatever looks most interesting as it goes by. I tried Snackr for a while and had to abandon it in spite of how fun it was (with the number of news feeds for the amount and variety of blogs I write hitting the thousands, it was just too overwhelming for me), but I have always thought it was a great tool for someone with a few less feeds to follow.

Snackr is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and in a limited form on Linux. The fact that they included the Appleheads and the Penguin crowd in their release was a huge selling point for me when they first started. It is built using the popular Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR. This newest news only adds to the reasons I like and recommend Snackr and wish it were more useful for me personally.

It seems that as Snackr got requests from users for more and more features, they took the need for faster development to heart. Instead of over burdening the project (a side project, really, for its developers) they have placed the source code on Google Code for anyone to see and write patches for, and they have also given you a way to view it anonymously. I think this is a great solution to a problem that plagues many applications to day - how to find the time on a shoe string budget to implement changes and requests.

Think of how much faster issues with things like the cluttered FriendFeed would be if the code was open sourced. We would already have the things the users are clamoring for, like better sorting and prioritizing, because the users that want it, in many cases also could create it if they had access to the source code.

I am loving this idea of using online resources and open sourcing projects as a way to get things done. I think Snackr is right on the money with this, and I can't wait to see what the Snackr users come up with in terms of patches and features. Meanwhile, if you are looking for a unique feed reader that will help you read your feeds right on your desktop, check out Snackr.