Fantastic RSS Readers to replace Google Reader
I’ve used google reader, loved it but there was something missing for me, maybe the interface wasn’t that handy. After having a discussion with a good friend Victor & checking out suggestions, I came with a cool list of RSS readers. These readers are mostly desktop based and are feature rich. Check them out and do chip in with your suggestions through comments.
1- NewzCrawler:
NewzCrawler is something I would say “Awesome”! – A great feed reader with a simple interface, loads of features, a built-in browser and much more. After my first install, it automatically started downloading news from the list of default channels, related to News, Movies, Sports, Technology, Science, Blogs, Podcasts and other Miscellaneous stuff.
As mentioned earlier, the interface is really simple, you can add new channels in a minute or less. Adding those channels isn’t hard either, right click on a folder and add new, it will take you to the screen where you can enter newsfeed channel url if you know the exact location of the RSS newsfeed channel, create a search result channel which helps you if you want to monitor a specific or set of keywords search results on websites like yahoo, feester etc. It also gives you the ability to subscribe to a regular blog, some maybe located at service like blogger, Livejournal, AOL journal etc.
Another feature that you may like is it’s headline bar, you’ll see a small news ticker which displays latest news from different websites in real time. It doesn’t take much space & you can turn it off if you want to. You can download the trial version and try it out, if you think it’s something you want, buy it for $24.95 (not expensive).
2- GreatNews
I confronted GreatNews a while back & the best thing I can say is, it’s one of the most fastest RSS readers that I’ve ever installed. The interface is simple and much user friendly, adding a news feed from a blog or any other source is also a piece of cake. With a built-in browser to check out stuff on the spot and the ability to view related posts etc is something I admire. From full page reading to categorizing articles (with labels), here are some of it’s features,
- Support all major feed formats, including RSS 0.9x, 1.0(rdf), 2.0, Atom 0.30 and 1.0. Support popular extensions like dublin core, content:encoding etc.
- Integrated internet browser, with tabs and popup blocking. Working closely with default browser like Firefox.
- With Import/Export wizard, you can import/export all channel subscriptions in a single step.
- Export rss articles to rss 2.0 format. You can also customize the export by selecting channel/group/label, and/or applying filters.
- Bloglines.com integration
- Read everywhere at Bloglines.com, but read twice as fast at your desk.
- Full text search with keyword highlights.
- 100% Unicode support. Displays international languages on the same page. Use any languages anywhere in GreatNews, including Search, Label and News watch.
- “Channel Organizer” helps organize channel subscriptions in one place. Use “Find Channel” to locate your subscriptions quickly.
- Support HTTP Conditional GETs and gzip/deflate encoding to reduce bandwidth consumption.
- Track Comment function automatically updates articles with latest comments.
- BlogThis function to post directly to your blogging service. Support popular blogging tools like w.Bloggar, Zoundry and Windows Live Writer.
3- FeedDemon
FeedDemon is another one of the most popular desktop RSS reader out there. Configuration is rather easy and interface looks nifty as well. It’s feature rich but does have some drawbacks like it does not thread related blog posts, searching isn’t that fast etc. Features include:
- Newspaper Format: When you select a channel, FeedDemon’s tabbed browser displays the channel’s news items in a newspaper for easy reading. You can display a newspaper of news items for an entire folder or view one feed at a time.
- News Bins: Store news items in a central location and provide a handy way to collect items from different channels. If you find an interesting item that you might want to read again, just store it in a news bin for future reference. News Bins are synchronized through the NewsGator Online platform, so you can read these items from FeedDemon on other computers as well as other NewsGator readers.
- Synchronization: Read a post in FeedDemon and it is marked as read in other NewsGator readers.
- Shared Experience: See what news is popular with other NewsGator users and find out who is linking to the news you’re reading.
- Video: Watch embedded video right within the newspaper view.
- Panic Button: Ever gone on vacation and gotten a little behind on your reading? The Panic Button solves this and many other problems by quickly marking all older items read.
- Watches: Look for keywords in news items as they’re downloaded. After you create a watch, it examines every incoming news item whenever any channel is updated.
- News Comes To You: Subscribe to feeds from all over the web or choose some of the dozens of default feeds.
- Search: Search outside of FeedDemon’s subscriptions by selecting a feed search engine, then enter your keyword, and FeedDemon will subscribe to a dynamic channel containing the search results for that keyword.
- Podcasts: Powerful podcasting tools enable you to download audio files and automatically copy them to your iPod or other media player. The bundled FeedStation utility enables you to schedule your downloads so they happen overnight while you’re asleep. When you wake up, you’ll find new audio waiting on your media player of choice.
NewsGator is another one fantastic rss feed reader from the same the company. It’s a free, web-based RSS reader from any computer to keep up with your interests. Videos, news, sports, music, blogs, business updates, podcasts, funny stories, and technology information will all come to you automatically – no more searching and checking web sites to see what has changed! Check it out here.
4- Sage (Firefox Add-on)
Sage is something I’ve been recommended by lots of people, sole reason (I believe) is that it’s not a desktop software but a firefox extension which improves on Mozilla Firefox’s live bookmarks with an RSS feed reader extension. If you’re looking for simplicity and don’t want to add another feed reader (desktop based) – give sage a try. I personally don’t think it can be compared with any other popular app since it does not update feeds on a schedule, cannot notify you of new items, search filter con’s etc.
Features include:
- Reads RSS (2.0, 1.0, 0.9x) and Atom feeds
- Feed Discovery
- Integrates with Firefox’s bookmark system
- Imports and exports OPML feed lists
- Newspaper feed rendering customizable via style sheets
- Support for the following locales: Argentine Spanish, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish
5- BlogBridge
BlogBridge is a powerful blog / news reader. The interface looks way better than most, has the option of subscribing to loads of pre-given (suggested) feeds, easy on navigation etc. They have a cool feature called “Smart Feeds”. In their own words
“It’s one of the keys to filtering and discovering stuff from all the worlds blogs. A SmartFeed is like a regular Feed, except that you get to say what’s in it. With SmartFeeds you can direct and integrated access to many popular services like Technorati and Flickr as one way to find information from blogs everywhere. You can also cull your existing feeds based on keywords, dates, ratings and other criteria.”
Lots of features are covered, runs fine on windows, Mac and linux. And just so you know (In case you’re having trouble running it) – it requires Java (latest, better) to run.
I’ve confronted basically lots and lots of feed readers during my research, couldn’t find any which offers something unique enough, rest are almost the same.
8 Comments
Well, if you are comparing those readers with Google Reader, the one thing that you missed mentioning is how Google Reader is online and still feature rich. Plus being online as its advantages too…
Not comparing, just providing better alternatives. There are other web based RSS readers like NetVibes, Sage (Mentioned above) but desktop based apps are more convenient. You don’t have to go log in everytime to see what’s new
Have you tried using feedly? If Google Reader lacks something, feedly more than makes up for it by providing a magazine like interface and ff & twitter integration.
Yes, Rishi. I did had a look at Feedly earlier. Again, I’m not a huge fan of managing (almost) everything through firefox extensions. I do agree that the interface looks awesome but we’re focusing more on how easily you can manage your feeds instead.
NewzCrawler and Blog Bridge aren’t bad either if you’re going for the looks along with the work ==)
I used Feedreader
No feedly (www.feedly.com) in this list? Boo. I am sad.
I don’t think any of these RSS Readers allow you to ’share’, i.e. in Google Reader I can ’share’ an item I like which then populates my own rss feed friends can subscribe to. Anyone know of another RSS app which does allow sharing?
My beef with Google Reader is the errors. A whole feed was reconstituted as “unread”, and on the iPhone, the biggest problem is that you offlink and go back to the reader and it reloads when it shouldn’t. And when it reloads, it marks an item as “read”, which is a total pain.
I think the interface in Google Reader is ugly, but that’s pretty typical of Google–their UI designers are nowhere near the caliber of their app developers. Why I can’t rename a folder is beyond me.
What about other iPhone readers?