There are so many choices now for reading RSS feeds. Settling in to read what others are saying about this and that is my favorite part of my day. I look forward to it, and I feel I’m better informed about a wide variety of issues and ideas because I read feeds from all over the place. But there are so many different ways to read.
For me, first it was “NetNewsWire”:http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/ Great software, OS X only. Then I switched to “FeedDemon”:http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/index.asp since I was doing so much of my surfing/reading from the PC. I know there’s also “PulpFiction”:http://freshlysqueezedsoftware.com/products/pulpfiction/ on the Mac, “NewsGator”:http://www.newsgator.com/ for reading feeds from Outlook on a PC and so on and so on. All with their own features, but the same limitation. They tie you down to the computer they’re on. I know NetNewsWire is working on a syncing feature, but that still requires both computers to be on the same network. That’s fine when you want to move from the office to the couch, but what abput when you’re traveling? I had my iBook with me over the weekend and a little bit of downtime in DC. I would have loved to catch up on some feeds, but my iBook doesn’t have up-to-date feed software. I know that Safari will have a RSS feature in Tiger (OS X 10.4) but that still has to be set on a computer-by-computer basis.
So I came home and decided to give “Bloglines”:http://www.bloglines.com a try. The advantage to Bloglines for me is that it’s entirely web-based so I can read feeds from any Internet connection, Mac or PC. Centralizing my information seems to be a theme for me lately. I easily imported all my FeedDemon feeds in OPML format and organized the folders. So far, I like it. It’s free. It’s not like I have precious information saved in it so I’m not as concerned if the company falls off the face of the earth. It’s nice to have one less application open. And best of all I’m not tied to a single computer to read feeds or mailing list email (thanks to GMail).
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FYI, NewsGator Online Services (http://services.newsgator.com) provides subscription synchronization capability (with NewsGator for Outlook), and online access to your feeds through NewsGator Web Edition, Mobile Edition, POP Edition, and Media Center Edition…
Good to know, thanks. But Bloglines is still free.
Plus, in a review I read that Newsgator Online Edition doesn’t have the ability to sort feeds into folders. Is that true? That would be a deal-breaker for me.
Nick has recently dropped hints about providing synchronization for FeedDemon. He’s being fairly cryptic about it for the moment, though.
http://nick.typepad.com/feeddemontips/2004/09/post_to_delicio.html
Interesting. It’s great to see that Aggregator developers recognize that syncing is a huge feature that has to be implemented. I already own a license for both FeedDemon and NetNewsWire so I can sit back and see what happens. My hunch however, is that it will still be application-centered so unless Nick does something web-based the way NewsGator or Bloglines does, it won’t work for me since I only have one PC.