Microsoft is really trying to show off what Vista is capable of doing graphically by creating their own application that uses the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). The program that they have created is a 3D way for you to view your RSS feeds and is called UniveRSS (took me a minute but then I realized the name is like “universe”). Here is a brief overview of how the feed reader works:
It introduces a full-screen 3D universe where galaxies represent the folders of your RSS feed directory, and the stars are represented by the spinning cubes that hold the feed information. Size and position of the feed cubes indicate how many unread items they contain.
You navigate through the feed galaxies in a game-like environment, freely moving in all three dimensions. Selecting items in lists will turn the cube to the next side displaying the item’s content including images. Just click the right mouse buttons and you turn back to the list view or to the galaxy.
UniveRSS is a showcase application that demonstrates the use of several WPF features, 3D animations, data binding, and data visualization. Currently UniveRSS uses the RSS Feed Store managed through Internet Explorer 7. Later versions will allow you to manage the Feed Store from within the UniveRSS application.
Two things came to my mind when I saw this and the first thing was the system requirements. I looked and it requires Vista running with a compatible WDDM graphics driver which means it won’t work on my laptop (but should do fine on my desktop). The second thing that popped into my head was how useful this would really be. Sure it looks cool but there is no way that I could navigate through my 1,000’s of feed posts that I receive every hour by shuffling through cubes. This is obviously meant for the casual RSS subscriber.
Not only that but if you want to use UniveRSS you’ll need to have your feeds stored in Internet Explorer 7. That was the “nail in the coffin” for me not installing the program. They mentioned that future versions will have its own storage system but for right now you’ll have to use IE 7.
So I haven’t tried this myself so I don’t know what the graphics are really like but I can’t imagine that is anything so great that it should require users to have Vista installed with a WDDM driver. In the coming months we may see a knock-off version of this written in OpenGL or something along those lines that works with more than just Windows Vista. 
News Source: Neowin
Looks like the links are not working currently. I just tried to download it.
That’s stupid! I just went to try and download it and they want me to register…so that I can be informed about updates. That is just crap.
What’s even more weird is that the drop-down list of countries doesn’t include the United States.
I am taken to this page after signing up:
[microsoft.com]
and if I hit the “I agree” button it starts a download of UniverRSS.application which is the file that you run. It essentially sees if your computer meets the requirements and will then download the necessary files.
If you click on the above link it will let you download. But since I don’t have Vista it would be as useful as a screen door on a submarine!
I don’t want to even think about going through all that stuff just to read my feeds! I am not a huge feed person, but I casually check a couple of times a day. I would have to load the program, find the right cube, and ignore all of the distracting 3D effects. This has got to be one of the most impractical ideas ever! It does look really cool, though.
(As a side note, unless you had hundreds of feeds, it would not look as cool as they describe it to be.) They do say on the website that this is just an example of WPF to educate developers with, so maybe it will succeed in that. Someone might do something useful with it! 
I installed and ran it on WinXP, and didn’t find it terribly compelling. My review and screenshots are here:
[inkblots.markwoodman.com]
Another cool RSS Reader you can try out is Denounce, also built with WPF, reviewed here:
[blendout.blogspot.com]