Now that I'm packing for our SES NY 2006 show, it was a good time for me to revisit how to get RSS Bandit to be in exactly the same state on your laptop as it is on your desktop, something I wrote previously was a nightmare with NewsGator.

RSS Bandit does have a number of advanced features that should make it possible for me to upload a feed from one computer and continue reading from where I left off on another. As RSS Bandit's help files explain, this is handy if you've been reading at work, then drive home and want to read again without seeing all the same things you read already.

I haven't tried any of built-in options because when experimenting weeks ago with RSS Bandit, I found another way. In addition, I didn't want to try them because NewsGator had already burned me bad with its synchronization. I just wanted to find a way to grab the crucial files and drag them from the desktop to my laptop to make everything work.

After some poking around, I found where RSS Bandit keeps all of its files. For my computer, it looks like this:

C:\Documents and Settings\My Username\Application Data\RSSBandit

Within the RSSBandit folder are a bunch of files and other directories. My "stumble upon it" solution was simply to copy the entire folder from my desktop to a holding area on my laptop. I then renamed the RSSBandit folder on my laptop RSSBandit-old (you can call it whatever you like). Then I moved the RSSBandit folder from my holding area to underneath the Application Data folder.

When I launched RSS Bandit after doing this, voila! All my feeds were there, organized in the right folders, and it was exactly in sync with my desktop when I looked between them.

I did this first back in January. Today, I wanted to see if there was a better way. The RSS Bandit folder can get pretty large, like 8MB for me. I know, because I back this folder up each night. Much of size is due to material in the cache folder.

When I copied this time, I renamed the Cache folder within the RSSBandit folder on my laptop. Then I removed all the files within the RSSBandit folder, replacing them with the ones from my desktop. It worked! Well, mostly. My desktop picked up a few items my laptop wasn't showing. When I tried again the usual way, those missing items appeared. I suspect it was just a download problem, but to be safe, I stuck with the "old" way.

Writing this up, I did take a closer look at the built in synchronization system and played with it. One option is File Share, as explained more here. Rather than give it a directory path to my file server, I configured it write to my computer, to my My Documents directory.

Next, I went to the Tools menu and selected Upload Feeds. I got a confirmation screen, said yes, and away it went. It wrote a file called rssbandit-state.zip to my configured directory. Opening that up, I could see it contained four XML files, one with a list of all my feeds, one for all my flagged items, one for my search folders and finally a subscriptions file that records the viewing state for each of my individual feeds.

My brute force method is copying across these files and more, which is why it work -- and probably why it is overkill. When I come back from my trip, I'm going to try the built in system. I suspect it will be as simple as uploading to a file on my laptop, then putting that file on my desktop and downloading it into RSS Bandit there. And if I'm really slick, I'll even try putting it on my file server, just as RSS Bandit suggests, saving me from any drag-and-drop. Heck, if that works, maybe I'll get brave enough to try synchronizing with Newsgator Online, as RSS Bandit can do. Bloglines synchronization apparently remains off the cards, for now

Man, I love this tool! Now if I could just flag items by custom topics or tags.

It turns out Dare Obasanjo, one of the main developers behind RSS Bandit, saw my earlier post about wanting this and says maybe it will happen, if he gets time. I hope so. I'm not so worried about needing to tag items with multiple topics, at this point. I just be happy if I could make multiple folders and assign feeds to them. On a busy day, I might be working a dozen different stories and so would love to lump all the similar stories together for later reference.

Next Post: After Six Years, The Inland Revenue Decides I Owe It £111
Previous Post: Petition To Fix Gmail's Custom From Glitch
All Posts: Daggle Archives
Posts By Category: Daggle Categories
Return To: Daggle Home Page

Comments

Want to comment? If you are signed into TypeKey, you'll see a form below. No form? Click on the sign-in link below, and you can sign-in or sign-up for a free account. Sorry you have to use TypeKey, but I use it to avoid comment spam. All comments currently appear automatically after posting.

Leave a comment

Name

Email Address

URL

Remember personal info?

Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)