Feedreaders: Which One & Why?

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[Lani]

At the moment I use "Brief" a Firefox extension which gets it's data from my live bookmarks and displays my feeds within the browser but without having to visit a site, (or sign up for anything.)

There are things I really like about it:

* No sign-up. 
* No having to load a webpage to view the feed
* It's really clean
* The ability to organise my feeds into folders easily
* The ability to set how often my feeds are checked and whether to get a popup notification or not.
* The ability to "Star" items for later attention.
* The search function, when I can't find a post.

Things that I would really, really like it to be able to do but it doesn't:

* Organise those "starred' items into groups
* Add notes to an item I've starred

The thing is though, I have zero experience of what other feedreaders can do and perhaps they would outweigh some of the things I like about Brief.  But I don't want to have to sign up to find out.

Can you guys give me the run down on why the feedreaders you use rock.  (Or why they don't.)  Because I'd really like to make sure that whatever choice I make, it's the optimal one for me.

Thanks a gazillion in advance.

[Meg]

Google Reader. I'm trying to get through a "how to sign up to Google reader" post for my blog [eek one post this year]

[Lani]

I'm just waiting for Snosk to swoop down and peck you for that selection. (I'm only kidding!)

I'll keep an eye out for the post.  You're one of my "always reads" anyway, so I won't miss it.

[Snoskred]

I used to use Google Reader, before Google decided to stab me in the heart and take away my page rank ruin my loyalty by trying to blackmail me into doing what they wanted mess with bloggers in inappropriate ways. Now, I can't trust them at all.

I tried bloglines but I'm not in love.

I'm thinking about using an offline reader, someone mentioned one to me which started with an S, but I forget the name now.

I might have time to think about it in 2009 sooo busy!

[macgirvin]

Think I mentioned this before, but I'm totally hooked on having my feedreader, forums, and blog all be the same thing. I can no longer show this to people because of copyright issues, but I get the top stories from 30-40 different feeds delivered right to my blog every morning and continuing throughout the day. I can see it, you can't - though if somebody has permission, they can export their personal 'view' of the site for  anybody to read. Yeah, I know that my software isn't the prettiest out there by a long shot; but it can do stuff like this that's actually pretty darn cool.

[clutterbells]

I originally tried Bloglines, but now use Google Reader, although I am woeful on staying on top of my feeds. I find it extremely intuitive and exactly what I would want in a piece of software. It does what it sets out to do.

My only grump is I sometimes have issues with formatting some of the windows in ways that work.

I still like to visit blogs, so don't use the reader as much as I could. My one major grump is partial feeds, which Meg wrote a great rant post about. Just don't do it, I would say.

[Sephyroth]

I started out with Bloglines, then went to Google Reader, but kept an account on Bloglines - and I have to say that I still prefer Google Reader, but then again, I haven't given myself much time to read feeds as of late...I think the thing about Bloglines, at least for me, is that it's a bit clunky to use - there's no real way to separate posts by labels, and the pinning system is, I think, inefficient.

I'm thinking about using an offline reader, someone mentioned one to me which started with an S, but I forget the name now.

Could it possibly be Sage? I remember trying it once, and not being all that impressed with it (I remember only being able to get the last 15 posts from a feed at a time; something that I would assume had changed by now though).

[goatlady]

I used to use FeedDemon (for windows). It's a standalone reader and very, very cool. I was really attached to it and really loved a lot of the functionality - especially the management of items flagged for later reading, and the offline reading features - but I was finding that because I use a del.icio.us bookmarklet for posting and stumpleupon and other Firefox extensions for managing my "online library", I needed to open URLs in Firefox in order to deal with them. This meant I was wasting a fair bit of time opening Firefox tabs from FeedDemon (the application has to switch focus each time). So I switched to Google Reader (yes, Google knows everything about me. I stopped worrying about it ages ago). I find having my feedreader in the browser is really convenient.

[Lani]

I find having my feedreader in the browser is really convenient.

Yup.  That's definitely something I like.  All I have to do now is click on the title at it will open the page in a new tab.

Google reader seems to be a popular choice.  How does the filing system work there?  Is it just tagging?

Also, and this shows my absolute ignorance, does it work like an application in your browser, or is it just a webpage you go to?

By the way, thanks everyone who's answered.  It's really helpful.

[macgirvin]

Could it possibly be Sage? I remember trying it once, and not being all that impressed with it (I remember only being able to get the last 15 posts from a feed at a time; something that I would assume had changed by now though).

That may be a technical/legal limitation, depending on how sage does things. 

Haven't looked at sage specifically but 15 is the magic limit on RSS 0.91, and a lot of sites still use this for compatibility with old readers. Unless the feedreader is storing the articles, you're only going to see those that are in the current feed, however many that is.

Many of the desktop readers only view feeds and don't store. This is primarily a legal issue. Storing articles may make you a copyright violator. Many of the online readers now store articles and can go backward in time to the first time that feed was visited (and ignore copyright, placing all the legal burden on the persons that view the feed -  a result of the US DMCA). However this can present other problems as well because there still isn't a mechanism for removing articles from these archives that may have been removed from the original site. It's created a real mess and a draft is in heated discussion for accomplishing this as we speak.   

Also FYI, the newer Atom paging extensions provide a link in the feed for previous and next - a feedreader can use these to (for instance) view an entire blog elsewhere; from whenever time began. This isn't quite in the mainstream yet but likely will be in another six months or so. I only adopted it a few weeks ago.

[Lightening]

I started with google reader but had a LOT of trouble with it freezing up on me all the time.  I had no troubles setting it up but could NOT for the life of me figure out how to add new blogs to it.  So it wasn't very idiot proof!    

I use bloglines now and I'm quite happy with it.  It's easy to be content when you don't know what else is out there!   

[Jaycee]

I started with google reader but had a LOT of trouble with it freezing up on me all the time.  I had no troubles setting it up but could NOT for the life of me figure out how to add new blogs to it.  So it wasn't very idiot proof!    

I'm not sure why Google Reader would freeze up on you all the time. But if you're using Firefox it's dead easy to add a new feed to Google Reader. In the Web address bar at the top of the page, you'll see an orange RSS icon. Just click on that and then you'll have the option of adding the feed to Google Reader or Google Homepage.

Otherwise in Google Reader itself there's an Add subscription link in the left hand bar. You have to find the feed address from the RSS subscribe button or link on the website you want to subscribe to and copy and paste into the Add subscription bit in Google Reader. It's more fiddly, but doable.

I remember having trouble subscribing to feeds in the beginning too as it's not always intuitive. 

[Lani]

As when any question we bloggers could probably come up with, there are some answers out there in the ether.  deswalsh wrote a 5 part series for anyone else interested in seeing the comparisons.

5 Favorite Feed Readers: 1 - NewsGator Online
5 Favorite News Readers: 2 - BlogBridge
5 Favorite News Readers: 3 - Bloglines
5 Favorite News Readers: 4 - Google Reader
5 Favorite News Readers: 5 - FeedDemon

[ChristineParfitt]

I use netvibes and it works well for me. I'm not motivated to change but can't offer any insights into why I prefer it over others as I haven't seriously tried anything else.

[Meg]

Google Reader. I'm trying to get through a "how to sign up to Google reader" post for my blog [eek one post this year]

Finally finished! It was so long I ended up splitting it into two posts  How to Set up Google Reader and How to add new Feeds to Google Reader.

Now to catch up here 

[Lani]

Okay based on what I've been reading, I've decided to give BlogBridge a trial run, because that sounded  like it had most of the functionality I wanted.  I've downloaded the software and installed it, which only took a sec and then I exported all my live bookmarks to an opml file.  (Needed an addon for that.  Seriously, why isn't opml export standard with Firefox?!) Everything is now imported, which is cool, because I found feeds I'd subscribed to but put in the wrong place and I'm now grouping them the way I like.

One function I've discovered, which is cool, is that I can set up a smartfeed with google blog search and google news so that I get everything posted with my keywords in it.  I know you can do this elsewhere, but it's nice and easy in Blogbridge.  Apparently you can also synchronise you computers, if your using a desktop and a laptop so it's not too bad for travelling people.  You can also integrate your tagging with delicious (I really don't care where those damn dots go!) if you use it.

I don't think I'm to bothered by having it separate from the browser because it still just a click to open the page and I'm thinking that I can just livebookmark new feeds and after their "testrun" in brief, I can just import them again.

Anyway, I'll see how it all goes and report back.

[Bam]

I use goggle reader and somewhere I found an extension -Greasemonkey that lets me view the actual site in my google reader (when I want to) so I can now comment without leaving the google reader - saves me  a lot of time.

I have  a slight bug with the page jumping about  a bit but I can live with it -and the vertical /horizontal scrolls are mildly annoying -screen size is reduced.

I don't like partial feeds either so it gets around this - except for screen reduction on some blogs - today one was onyl showing half the iamges but the etxt was in column format almost.

forgive me whoever gave me this blog tip 

[ShadowKnight]

I just use Firefox or Thunderbird.  Just prefer to have a few applications open

[Suzie]

Google reader, although I have just changed o Flock as a browser as firefox keeps crashing and their feedreader looks good

[ShadowKnight]

Whilst I have stated my preference I just saw this on BlogCatalog and thought its worth adding to this discussion.

Newsgator is now making its desktop and online RSS readers free. This includes FeedDemon (Windows), NetNewsGator (Mac), NewsGator Go! (mobile phones), and NewsGator online.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/01/09/newnewswire-for-mac-other-newsgator-products-go-free

[reuel]

google reader here
i love it so far. used to the whole 'google way of things'
its gettin scary how often i find myself using googles services....

[Lani]

Well, after losing the internet for about 15 hours (heinous!) I'm extraodinarily glad that I wasn't on a web based reader, because I could catch up on some of my feeds.

[Snoskred]

google reader here
i love it so far. used to the whole 'google way of things'
its gettin scary how often i find myself using googles services....

That is exactly why I have committed myself to quitting using them. It is no good to let one company have that much power over me - or anyone else.

[trib]

After yesterday's news about the NewsGator making all their products free - http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/Default.aspx - they may be a choice as they make excellent clients.  However, I think you're mad if you don't use Google Reader.  It's lightweight (runs in a browser) and accessible everywhere.  Your data is also portable, as you can export or import an OPML file at any time.

Definitely worth using.

[Meg]

Well, after losing the internet for about 15 hours (heinous!)

FWIW Google Reader does have an offline mode that allows you to read your 2000 most recent items.