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Welcome everybody to the official launch of the highly anticipated Viigo 3.0 (Beta).

With a name like 3.0, Viigo is definitely looking to send a message. The message being; “We are changing the game”. One look at the feature list, which includes not only the standard RSS, news, weather and sports that we are used to, but also great new additions such as local attractions, hotel rates and hot spots, fashion, classifieds and gaming. All this and more, and it’s free!

If you are a fan of BBGeeks you already know that we like the Viigo app. We voted it the number one feed reader for the BlackBerry. We even went so far as to partner with them and bring you all the co-branded reader that gives you up to date feeds from various sections of the BBGeeks website.

Using the BBGeeks – Viigo co-branded RSS reader catch our daily articles as soon as they’re posted and see the latest software and accessories as they hit our store shelves. In future builds, you’ll even be able to listen to our podcast when it’s recorded every Friday. The best thing is when you download our RSS reader you get the power of Tango or as it is officially named: 3.0.

Taking a closer look at Viigo 3.0

There are quite a few great features wrapped up in this new Viigo 3.0. I will now break each one of them down and give you my impressions of the experience. If we are lucky then the application will live up to its name and really kick things up a notch.

News and RSS feed reading
Viigo has always done a consistent job of relaying timely news broadcasts and fresh RSS content across multiple platforms. They do a particularly good job with the BlackBerry.

Viigo sports thousands of news sources form local outlets and various international publications. You will spot popular outlets in there ( New York Times, Globe and Mail, BBC etc.) along with a great compliment of “culture” content which includes just about any blog, health and fitness information, cartoons and so much more.

2008 Election Coverage: While the race to the White House heats up, you can keep tabs on your front runner of choice with a special feed made up from a balanced combination of content providers.

With the current release, all of this content is available to BlackBerry users when they are online or out of network range. I anticipate good results here so let’s check it out.

The BBGeeks Impression:
The news feeds just rock. The reader comes pre-loaded with a ton of popular sites like TechCrunch, Boy Genius Report, Engadget, and of course, BBGeeks.com.

The best part is that it’s incredibly easy to add new content to Viigo 3.0. Just hit the Menu button and click Add Channel. You can choose from the wide range of blogs and news sites they have listed for you, or you can manually enter any RSS feed address to get instant updates. To top things off, you can sync with your computer RSS reader. This is compatible with Google Reader, My Yahoo, and Bloglines. There’s also an option to add a Craigslist channel, an ESPN search channel, or a general search channel.

Local events and lifestyle information
Whether you need to find the nearest bank or the best deal on a new sofa, Viggo 3.0 is there to help out. You can check out all kinds of interesting stuff on Kijiji, or find up to date currency exchange information, restaurant reviews and more.

I live in a smallish city in Ontario so I am going to see exactly how local Viigo thinks I want to go.

The BBGeeks Impression:
At this time, the local section is limited to classified ads. You can search cars & vehicles, community, for sale, housing, jobs, personals, pets, and services listings in your area. The load time can be a little slow for larger cities, but it’s not bad. It seems to take longer with more generic searches, like ‘2 bedroom’ for housing. When I searched ‘Fender Telecaster’ under For Sale, it found results considerably faster.

Entertainment of all kinds
As far as entertainment is concerned, Viggo covers it on all angles. With only a few clicks you now have access to all the latest news out of Hollywood, movie reviews and updates from the world of fashion. Additionally, you will have direct access to a large library of BlackBerry games, themes and ringtones from Bplay.

The BBGeeks Impression:
The selection from Bplay is quite impressive. You can choose from their latest and top games, themes, and other products. The news section comes default with three feeds: Yahoo!, MTV, and Rotten Tomatoes. You can choose to subscribe to these, and they will be added to your News & RSS section. You can add other entertainment news sites from the Add Channel function.

Tracking your stocks and finances
Never has it been easier to track your investments using your BlackBerry. With Viigo you can keep your eye on market fluctuations and manage your entire portfolio at any time. There is even a specially selected set of feeds set up to bring you up to the minute news from the financial district.

The BBGeeks Impression:
This is essentially another area where you can add feeds to your News & RSS section. Under the Portfolios heading, you can add feeds regarding widely held stocks and a number of portfolios, including healthcare, financial, services, technology, and energy. Under news you can add items from the New York Times Dealbook blog, Reuters, Marketwatch.com, and Yahoo! Finance. Finally, you can add feeds for up to date exchange rates for dozens of countries.

Flight and travel information
Viigo offers a great set of tools for tracking your individual flight and travel schedules. You even have the ability to set up detailed itineraries and have Viigo watch them for any changes. In turn you will be notified of any cancellations or modifications to your chosen route. As an added bonus, if any of your flights are canceled, Viigo will suggest possible alternate arrangements for you.

The BBGeeks Impression:
Not having any flights booked, I wasn’t able to really get into the flight tracking and alerts features. You can, though, search flights by airport departures or flight number. Once you add your flight, Viigo keeps track of your itinerary, and even adds in flight status. This seems to be as good as many applications we featured in our flight status and information for BlackBerry article.

Sports information
We all have a favorite team in some sport or another. If you are an avid fan, perhaps you have a handful of teams and players that you track closely. Viigo is here to help you out with this task by providing up to the minute scores and schedules for all the major league sports.

Whether your passion is PGA, MLB, NCAA, NFL, CFL, English Premiere League or the NBA, Viigo has all the stats you need right there at your fingertips.

The BBGeeks Impression:
These feeds add live score updates to your Viigo 3.0. You can select from baseball, basketball, football, golf, and motor sports. Hopefully, they’ll add a few more in the future. Hey, hockey season isn’t that far off.

Weather watching
One of the most popular uses for the BlackBerry other than checking the news and banging out email is to keep tabs on the local weather. As usual, Viigo is ready to help you judge whether or not to take that umbrella with you, or perhaps to go with the heavier sweater. Subscribe to weather forecasts from all over the place and get up to the minute data, satellite and radar mapping and 5 day weather forecasts.

The BBGeeks Impression:
When you go to add a city, Viigo asks if you want your temperatures in Fahrenheit or Celsius. It does have a database of a number of cities, including smaller towns. I found my small home town on the list, and I don’t even tell people I’m from there, because no one has ever heard of it.

Final thoughts on Viigo 3.0

Not everyone likes RSS. Some think it makes beautiful sites bland. Others just like the idea of surfing. Me? I’m an RSS guy. I have 30 some-odd feeds in my Google Reader on the desktop, so it’s nice to know I can sync them up to my BlackBerry. That saves some memory space, since it means I don’t need the Google Reader app anymore.

Overall, Viigo 3.0 runs pretty damn fast. The design is intuitive and simple. No crazy bells and whistles. Everything I clicked either loaded immediately or experienced very short load times. Best of all, it didn’t freeze my ‘Berry, which I had happen with the past couple of Viigo builds. Everything was smooth as a bowling ball.

Even if you’re not as impressed as me with the design or functionality, you can send feedback to Viigo right from the reader. Just click on the Feedback option, and you’ll be able to report bugs, request features, and make user interface suggestions. If you see something, say something. It just means that the official build of Viigo will be that much better.

The BBGeeks version of the Tango feed reader can be downloaded here!

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