I’m a firm believer in RSS. It has done me well. I’ve come out in support of different feed readers in the past and I would like to tell you why I’ve made my current decision (Newsfire).
Safari RSS
Pros: Built in to Safari, easy, straightforward, free
Cons: Feature-less, only available on your computer, no opml support
Google Reader
Pros: Available on any computer, nice keyboard shortcuts, free
Cons: Slow, web application, doesn’t display embedded content (except youtube)
NewsFire
Pros: Beautiful, fast update of feeds, auto-discovery of feeds, now free
Cons: Only available for OS X, not accessible from any computer
What is your default RSS reader?
UPDATE: Lifehacker ran a poll, and I went back to Google Reader.
i’m into the google reader cause i’m spreading my feedz across a few computers these days. i am annoyed by it’s disembeddingment (it strange and not consistent) and sluggish performance. i am, however , excited that they put the reader button on the top of the gmail page instead of the drop down. way to go goog!
I was using Google reader for a bit, but got bored of it…for some reason I enjoyed it more when I read the sites themselves versus using a reader. Super inconvenient, but for some reason I couldn’t break out of the old skool web surfin’ ways! I’ve been thinking about going back to one..
Maybe I’ll give Newsfire a go…
Ok, so I have now downloaded and begun building my feeds list again…really digging this (Newsfire).
I prefer google, but not for very good reasons. I use multiple computers throughout the day (personal laptop, box office pc, main office pc, family pc). Also, I have this thing about integration. I like that I can click on reader when I’m in gmail. And it’s also about visual integration, I like that it’s aesthetically consistent with the other stuff I frequently use (all google apps). That’s why I gave up on virb and want to give up on facebook, they’re just too ‘other’ and it takes a lot of energy to even look at them.
@Alisha Those are very good reasons. Visual integration is important. Also, I hate facebook more than anything.
I really have thought a lot about aggregating across computers. My wet dream is a NewsFire sync with Google Reader. How wonderful would that be?
Also, for $30 you can get NetNewsWire, which syncs with NewsGator.
Did I detect a Mac bias in your suggestions, Matthew?
(Although I have long been a genuine lover of the Mac, I have found it necessary to look at life through the Windows, for sheer dollars and sense reasons.)
Oh well.
Don, it’s true. I have a huge Mac bias. I don’t actually know any multi-platform or Windows or Linux specific feed readers. If you know any let me know? Yeah?