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RSS Reader?
laughinglizard:
After having gone through several online RSS readers, I find I've been adding everything to my Yahoo Start Page. Its a little like PageFlakes. I also use Google Reader with a few scripts that make it more pleasant to work with.
Some of the other online readers I thought were pretty good are:
Blog Bridge
http://www.blogbridge.com/
News Alloy:
http://www.newsalloy.com/
and Awasu:
http://www.awasu.com/
(a newsreader on steroids)
alxwz:
BlogBridge (Java, cross-platform) and Awasu (Windows) are desktop apps, although they have some sync capabilities over the web.
News Alloy, from what I've seen, seems to be on the brink of bankruptcy or at least a permanent shutdown (yet they claim to have found a "potential" new investor).
I'm probably about to settle for Google Reader. Strong points for Google Reader are (1) the "river of news" display and (2) that it works with every browser I've thrown at it so far (IE, Safari/Shiira/WebKit, Camino/K-Meleon/Gecko, even Opera). What could be improved: It would be nice if this Google (!) offering had search. And they could add some more Gmail-esque sorting and filtering/rules options (like starring or tagging by keywords).
I don't care too much for tags per se and the bunch of keyboard commands. Many people regard these as huge positives.
laughinglizard, could you please explain which scripts you use? Might be useful for others as well.
Another option I'm considering is buying into the NewsGator family with FeedDemon (Windows), NetNewsWire (Mac) and NewsGator Online for keeping everything in sync. But I really dislike their subscription model (seems you need a paid online account to activate any desktop component you "bought" from them) and NewsGator Online is s-l-o-w.
If it weren't for a usable online reader component, I would look into BlogBridge to keep several machines in sync. The desktop is free and they offer several plans to sync machines via the web, including a free one (limited to 300 feeds and 2 syncs/day, AFAIK). Never tried it, though.
I also tried GreatNews for their claimed ability to sync with Bloglines. But that seems to be one-way only. As a standalone app, GreatNews isn't too bad. Unfortunately, I couldn't find out how to enlarge the font for list view which looked tiny to me. Oh, and most desktop apps seem to work with IE as their internal browser. Don't like that.
laughinglizard:
laughinglizard, could you please explain which scripts you use? Might be useful for others as well.
--- End quote ---
Sure.
I don't use all of them, I'm passing along the ones I know about in case anyone finds them useful.
I use two Greasemonkey Scripts, one is Jasper's Google Reader subscribe http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/2571 and the other is Cleaning up Google's Left Nav http://userstyles.org/styles/1959 (its at userstyles but its available as a greasemonkey script there).
The rest are listed and reviewed and Lifehacker, so I'll give links.
The only one I use is Better GReader, though there are some other great scripts that include search and integrate Reader with GMail.
Better GReader: http://tinyurl.com/2z8lsd
Google Reader Notifier: http://tinyurl.com/yptk87
Google Reader Custom Search: http://tinyurl.com/285hx4 (greasemonkey script)
Integrate Google Reader with Gmail via Greasemonkey http://tinyurl.com/2gt2bu
Hack Attack: Getting good with Google Reader http://tinyurl.com/38cuf4
This is a good post on keyboard shortcuts, tweaks, and downloads.
I've used tinyurl links because the links at Lifehacker are long, if you have any trouble with them let me know.
Google Reader is a good reader, but these make it a lot easier to live with. Especially the ability to change skins and clean up the left nav bar.
alxwz:
laughinglizard, thanks a lot.
I will need some spare time to try all those (and how I can integrate them into my most-used browsers).
Meanwhile, I came across a site which seems to cover some of these scripts (among other stuff) as well:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-reader-tools-tips/
laughinglizard:
Meanwhile, I came across a site which seems to cover some of these scripts (among other stuff) as well:
http://www.makeuseof.com/...google-reader-tools-tips/
--- End quote ---
Oh, thanks alxwz, that's a good site. I snagged Colourful List View, I like colours to sort.
The Mac OS X theme is nice and clean. If you use Firefox you'll need to add the Stylish extension.
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