Broadband Advisor

Best Download

FreeReader Brings the News to Your Mobile Device

With scores of free programs now available on the Web, an application has to have more than just good looks to get the nod for our favorite shareware product. Our winner brings your news to places other free news readers can't.

FreeRange FreeReader brings the speed and convenience of RSS feeds to a wide array of mobile phones. Install this clean and fast feed reader, and the fun little games on your phone will soon suffer from neglect as you instead go straight for all the latest news reports from your favorite sources.

You can set up everything through your phone, but the better bet is to create your account and feed subscriptions through the Web site on a PC. As with any good news reader, you can import or export OPML lists from other readers, though you're limited to ten subscriptions in the free version. You can also create custom feeds that track news on particular topics or that watch market activity for one or more stock symbols.

After a quick download to your phone, you'll be reading your news in no time in a customizable and well laid-out display. FreeReader starts with article headlines and summaries and downloads the full articles only when you choose, and a typical update for ten feeds is small (around 80KB). But remember to watch your data usage if you don't have an unlimited data plan for your phone.

Best Web App

Slacker Works Hard to Find Music

Over the past year, music "taste sharing" sites have increased in visibility and popularity. They're not only a good way to get hip to new music, but they're good places to meet new people, too.

Despite its name, is no slouch. Rivals such as Last.fm and Pandora garner well-deserved praise, but don't compare to Slacker in ease of use. No matter what your music tastes may be, within about 30 seconds of first arriving at this Internet radio site you can be listening to your pick of a huge number of potential stations.

It gets even better. Slacker helpfully displays the full list of artists that play on any given station, but you don't have to stick with the list. If you start with one of the premade genre stations, you can toss bands you don't like from the lineup. Pick an artist station, which adds similar bands to an artist you search for, and you can also mix in your choice of crooners. You can choose favorite songs to hear them more often, and skip those you don't like (up to six songs per hour for the free level of use).

Add in more fine-tuning options for each station, such as whether to lean toward lesser-known music or top hits, plus a downloadable software player that can run without a browser, and you'll like this hard-working Slacker.