Here’s a cool tool I’ve been playing with for a few weeks. It’s called Viigo and it’s a RSS reader for your Smartphone. I’ve been testing it on my Blackberry Pearl (which still continues to leave my students in awe at the fact that they don’t need to carry around lunch-box sized smartphones unless their cranky old MLS mandates it) and it has worked flawlessly. So it’s time to share the product with all of you.

Oh, yes. And it’s free!

Viigo is an RSS reader. For some of us – even avid blog readers – RSS is still something we do on our “PCs” (oh, and I think even Macs can do PCs? Lou, what do you think? Can they handle them?) Modern websites and blogs can provide a “mostly text and a few graphics” in a “feed” that allows readers to subscribe to their content in a streamlined fashion. This “Really Simple Syndication” of content not only lets computer users pull in many feeds into their browser, and just scan the headlines (sort of like Google News brings in headlines and then lets you jump out to a variety of web news sources), but the RSS format permits something really special to happen: Streamlined access to website content on non-computer devices.

Like your Smartphone.

Even if your Smartphone isn’t really that smart – some basic phones without keyboards can even accept RSS feeds – the key is that the RSS content has been “stripped” down to the bare essentials, so that the simpler screens on wireless devices can display their content effectively. For those of us who remember “Associated Press” reports that used to come in on a pin-printer to the radio station, it’s the same idea: Plain text, just-the-facts data pushed onto plain-screen formats.

The beauty is that, with RSS, you can not only surf site content faster, but you can surf multiple sites faster on your Smartphone if you use a “reader.” RSS Readers are a kind of “bookmark browser” that lets you enter the URL of lots of RSS streams, then just check an “Index” of their headlines. The RSS technology (or the reader, or both) will frequently ask for “updates” of the content from the sites you have subscribed to, without asking you to “refresh” or actually visit the sites. Content is pushed from the sites regularly (or pulled by the reader every time you start it up).

So, that’s the RSS process. Now, let’s talk about Viigo. You can go to their site and download the software – or just install it  “Over the Air” (OTA) by surfing your smartphone to their site. It’s a tiny application and it installs in seconds. Viigo starts you out with some “popular” RSS feed categories or “Channels” as it calls them – such as News headlines, their own blog, a localized automobile and weather traffic feed, etc. Adding your own channels is a piece of cake – just click your menu and Add Channel. Enter the URL and presto!

Viigo has more than 5000 channels to choose from and you can create your own custom feeds from just about any site, too. Some specific channels are just too cool – such as UPS/Fedex/DHL channel which lets you track packages from your Smartphone. (All Graphics from http://www.viigo.com) All channels can have “alerts” setup to monitor new content for any “key words” you might be keeping an eye on. So if you have added a “Wall Street Journal” feed and you want to monitor the words “housing market” or “inflation” that may appear in new stories, Viigo will send you an alert when they next appear in the feed.

But wait! There’s more!

One of the features I use the most is “Send Article to Me” which instantly takes whatever page I’m reading and zaps it to me in an email. There is a “send to a friend” function, too, but I prefer to send it to myself first, then forward it to friends (so I get the relationship- building benefit of adding my signature file – grin!).

Viigo is very customizable. You can set the maximum number of articles it pulls from each feed (or all feeds) which is important if you didn’t get a large memory stick for your smartphone. Plus you can create a schedule for it to update the feeds (or it does it automatically), which can conserve battery power (or minutes, if you didn’t get an unlimited data plan on your smartphone (not so “smart”)).

When reading each posting, you can scan the basic summary, then pull in the full article in “plain text, minimal graphics” format directly into Viigo, or click to see the full website (graphics and all) in your smartphone browser. If you read articles in Viigo, there are integrated buttons to add them to Del.icio.us, Stumble It! and Digg, too, so you can save articles and share them with friends (or the world) in the blog-posting-promoting networks.

In true Boston fashion, Viigo would be considered “wicked cool!” It’s a must have for smartphone users to be connected to web content in a fast, friendly way – especially for managers who can scan headlines and zap them to agents and clients (who can send them on, too). Adding your own site to Viigo makes it easy to send your own stuff to clients by email, who may be checking up using their Smartphones, as well.