Excellent RSS reader

[MerleOne]

Hi,

I recently discovered FeedDemon from Newsgater which is freeware.  There is one feature I'd like to mention because it is really there that this software shines : if you create a simple account on Newsgator (username+passwd, no e-mail required!) you can sync all your PC where feeddemon is installed so that you share RSS streams and also which items have been read.  There are many other features, I would really advise those who look for a nice RSS reader to have a look.

[sri]

It won't be soon before you, like most of us, switch to Google Reader.

[nite_monkey]

lol, funny you should mention google reader. That is what I use. I also used to install readers, but I finally switched.

[Grorgy]

Ive tried to use google reader, but it doesnt have what feeddemon has, which is all the posts, as an example i get the feed from majorgeeks, i'll get maybe 1 thing on google reader all day, but go look at the site and their should be 10 or 15, feeddemon gets them all.  I dont trust google reader to deliver.

[justice]

yes im a feeddemon convert too. i love the panic button.

[MerleOne]

lol, funny you should mention google reader. That is what I use. I also used to install readers, but I finally switched.

Maybe, but I did try first Google Reader and I simply don't use it anymore : too confusing.  After a few days/weeks without looking at it there are so many messages that I don't read any of them.  With a local RSS reader I tend to be more selective since I know it will take some part of my HDD.

[40hz]

It won't be soon before you, like most of us, switch to Google Reader.

Possibly. But only when we, like most of you, are willing to live with what Google is offering. One size does not fit all, no matter what the Googles and Microsofts of the world would have us believe.

BTW:Who exactly is "most of us"? Is that a new hip-hop group? 

[Darwin]

+1 for Feeddemon  I haven't tried the Google offering, mind you, but I am not particularly motivated to change.

[TomColvin]

I use both FeedDemon and Google Reader on a very regular basis, but for different tasks.

In Google Reader, I occasionally track over 150 feeds for information relevant to writers.  Periodically, I spend several hours "sharing" posts I think are important so that my blog readers can easily review them.

FeedDemon, for me, is more personal.  Here I gather a handful of feeds that are most important to me.

I find both of them excellent, particularly since I maintain desktops in two locations separated by half the globe.

[dantheman]

I find Bloglines and GReader to be better in many ways than FeedDemon.

But mostly because you don't need to open or install another program (you're likely using your browser right?).

You can also use mouse gestures (lacking in FD).

The fact that GReader lets you view previous posts (greyed out) is pretty handy at times and don't see any delays with new posts coming about.

[iphigenie]

Google reader is really slow for me - whether it is going back to all feeds, picking just 1 feed, or picking 1 item to see alone, all 3 take 20 seconds wait.
I was hoping to use it since I am on several computers and it would prevent me having to see so much in duplicate, but it's just too slow. On top of that it does not seem to integrate with google notebook and other things as well as I would have expected

Other online reader recommendations would be welcome.

[dantheman]

Have you tried www.newsgator.com (the one that you sync FeedDemon with)?
I find it slow to login but after that, it's not too bad.

Other than www.bloglines.com and that one, i'm afraid there aren't any other online feed readers.
At least, none that i know of.

[app103]

Bloglines is my online feedreader of choice because you can often read posts much older than when you first subscribed, and you get the blog feature to share clippings and comments (you can use it as a full blown blog or as a mini blog), also good for discovering new blogs to read...has quite a few ways to do that. You can get in big trouble and end up sufferring from information overload if you start checking out the public blogrolls of the people that are subscribed to the same feeds as you. You could end up doubling your feed count very quickly.

By the way, Google Reader comes in 3 flavors, all 3 of which can be used in a desktop browser, each having their pros & cons:

1. The one everyone already knows about. (Too slow for use on my current PC)

2. Blogger Dashboard (needs a Blogger account) - They call it "following" and it can handle a lot of feeds (I have over 200 loaded in it) and is great for speed reading excerpts of all your feed's posts from the last 24 hours. There is no read/unread status for items and you can't save or mark them in any way...just a river of headlines, excerpts & links to original items. This is very good for people suffering information overload and will help you limit yourself. Runs good on a slow pc/connection.

3. Mobile version - no frills, no clutter, fast loading on desktop, and bonus is fast loading mobile versions of web pages with no scripting and very few ads, when you click a link from a feed item...also allows sharing items with friends, like it's big brother (shared items will link to original pages unless they are read in Google Mobile). This is good for the slowest of PC's that can't handle Bloglines (or very slow dialup connections), but you'll need access to a decent PC to import your OPML and set it all up in the regular version of Google Reader, first.

[jsfaint]

FeedDemon is a very useful software, but I left GreatNews after I tried more than 10 feed readers.
GreatNews is also a freeware

[Nod5]

I also use GreatNews. But I'm more and more leaning towards leaving it. It has not been updated in a long time and development seem to have halted. It is genuinly sad to see since GreatNews was such a promising program. I've used FeedDemon before so might very well be going back to it again. That or the upcoming RSSOwl 2.0 ( http://www.rssowl.org/ )

[ajp]

Google Reader is great; for some reason it hooks you up. But I must say NewsGator does something that Greader doesn't: G is 100% web; NG has many front ends:

• Web
• PC
• PDA / Smartphone (native client, sync+offline reading, not a mobile edition of the site)
• And I guess there is a news-in-your-inbox kind of solution, I don't remember now

I know: the cloud is the future and it will even wash your clothes... but if I like my client to be native, I want to have the choice. The PDA app is what made me a loyal user of NewsGator for some while. I need to be able to read my feeds offline; no 3G data yet. But the client (Windows Mobile 5, smartphone ed.) felt a bit slow and heavy, and I switched to mDigger which sports a pretty fine, lightweight reader, though the web interface is too primitive and limited. It's mostly used to manage your suscriptions on the smartphone, rather than to read the news.

Since yesterday I'm trying YoMoMedia which looks similar to Greader (but a bit cleaner, which I like) and also has a PDA native client. Seems to work quite well; I'll keep on evaluating it. BTW, I imported my OPML feed from Greader into YoMoMedia and worked like a charm. NewsGator does OPML quite well, Google too; mDigger doesn't.

[hpearce]

I use and like feeddemon too.
One enhancement i would like is a rightclick > open link in default browser  .....  right now you can only use a general setting for all links thru the options.

[jsfaint]

I think zhuaxia is easy to use than google reader, but it's a pity that zhuaxia only has Chinese UI. It is also an online RSS reader.

RSSOwl is a good choice, but it is programmed in java, too slow, more memory cost.. sigh.

[Paul Keith]

Rereading this thread reminded me of how there still isn't a killer app for feed reading.

Newshutch had potential and in fact was overtaking both Google Reader and Bloglines as a third option before it's demise but in this day and age, feed readers went from a sprawling collection of offline and online offerings into Google Reader for online and Feed Demon for offline with Bloglines retaining it's old position.

It's scary how market monopoly drives innovation. Here we are where people have already created new tweaks to rss reading like twitter/friendfeed layer, magazine lay-outs and netvibes/igoogle mini-tabs, a scrolling ticker and yet no individual has yet tried developing an Outlook for rss readers.

Contrast this in the past where there was nothing going for rss readers except the aesthetic and the stability common in any programs and you got NewsHutch, an online Newspaper lay-out who's name I forgot, Netvibes, IGoogle, GReader, Bloglines (Old), GreatNews, Omea Reader, Sage, Wizz Rss, GreatNews, This ad-ware RSS reader with a green theme, this offline RSS-reader that highlights your RSS based on your preference, RSSOwl, RSS Bandit, etc.

All pretty much adding features or taking away without really offering anything new just to get ahead of the RSS Reader race.