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Get your news the old fashioned way
5 April 2016 | by Morse News
I'm always looking for ways to improve my CW copy skills. When I'm away from the radio and have some spare time I use a program called Morse News.
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| Morse News interface displaying a "Top 100 words" feed scrolling at the bottom |
It's an application that pulls RSS feeds and translates them to Morse. It has useful configuration options and even allows different "sounders" to be used.
For instance: you can listen to Morse the way railroad and Civil War telegraphers heard it via the clacking Telegraph sounder, or the early 20th century spark gap transmitters.
For instance: you can listen to Morse the way railroad and Civil War telegraphers heard it via the clacking Telegraph sounder, or the early 20th century spark gap transmitters.
The application is free but only runs on Windows computers. I'd love to see something like this for my phone.
Here's the link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/morse-rss-news/files/Morse%20Code%20Tools%203.2/MorseTools32Setup.exe/download
As with all software downloads from an untrusted source use your own best judgement whether to install this software and protect yourself from malware. I haven't detected any malware from my install but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Here's the link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/morse-rss-news/files/Morse%20Code%20Tools%203.2/MorseTools32Setup.exe/download
That's all for now
So lower your power and raise your expectations
72/73
Richard, AA4OO
2 Responses to “Get your news the old fashioned way”
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Morse News looks like a neat application. It is free and seems to be Open-Source. I just wish the whole way the program is presented was better. Plus the program is Windows only. (After Windows-10 spying on me – I’m done – leaving Windows forever.) Details…
1. This program is Windows only (it may work under Wine, but to be frank, for reasons explained below I just didn’t try). This program requires the use of a Windows Installer, it is not stand-alone 🙁
2. The page referenced by the post’s Author here:
http://morse-rss-news.sourceforge.net/rssmorsedoc/news.html
has no information I can find on how to actually download this software. However, after digging around it seems you can get to a jump-off page with more information and a download link on (See Warning Below!) Sourceforge here:
http://morse-rss-news.sourceforge.net/
Alternatively you can go directly to the Sourceforge download page:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/morse-rss-news/files/Morse%20Code%20Tools%203.2/MorseTools32Setup.exe/download
However, the page first referenced by the Author mentions a v3.3 version of the software. But the actual download page I found seems to refer only to an older V3.2 software “bundle” (yes it seems you may have to install more than one program in a bundle; see below).
3. It seems the program “Morse News” comes as a two-part bundle called “Morse Tools” The two parts seem to be installed together. The two parts consist of loosely linked applications: “Morse News” and “Morse Keyer”. Morse News is the desired application. Morse Keyer seems to turn an RS-232 serial port into a closed contact (sort-of) interface. Few people these days have real Serial Ports any more. Also, if the serial port program tries to use handshaking lines, there’s a good chance a USB/Serial cable won’t work properly in near real-time anyway.
4. There seems to be yet another Sourceforge page for “Morse Tools” (or some-such), see here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/morse-rss-news/
On closer examination this additional page appears to be part of the whole Sourceforge “fragmentation” for the Morse Tools project. But at this point, I just don’t care.
5. WARNING: This project is still hosted on Sourceforge. Sourceforge is NO LONGER the benevolent host it once was – it has been bought-out by some really bad Greedheads that now try to bundle software downloads with “drive-by” Malware that you don’t need or want. Just be VERY CAREFUL with anything you download from Sourceforge these days. Inspect the download and install process carefully and opt-out of anything that looks suspicious.
Best 73’s, David
Downloading any software carries risks. It’s the age we live in.
Use your virus/malware scanner on any executable you download before running it.