Switching to Google Reader
I've been a long time user of NetNewsWire -- the best desktop news aggregator app on any platform. But I'm switching to Google Reader.
Reason number one is portability. Forget synching...it just doesn't work reliably, and I don't like NewsGator's online version at all. I'm now on my Nokia E61 phone a lot, and the mobile version of Google Reader works great
Reason number two is that I want to share. My delicious postings are one of the main ways I've been sharing lightly -- light blog posting in general, except for brief spurts like today. I think that Google Reader will make it easier for me to share. For example, here are all the postings I've gathered in my "bryght" folder. It's not ideal -- I can only tag, star, or share items, without leaving any commentary as I do in delicious -- but I expect it will get better.
The big downside of Google Reader? No authenticated feeds. I have many beefs with Google and the way they're dealing (or not dealing, as the reality is) with identity: this lack of support for authenticated feeds seems another aspect of this.
So, there you have it: the best feed reading experience that synchs with your mobile is currently Google Reader.
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I jsut released a service
I jsut released a service today that allows you to subscribe to an authenticated feed using any feed reader even if they don't support authenticated feeds, including Google Reader.
http://freemyfeed.com/
Not sold on all online tools
gmail was pretty crappy for a week and a bit for me. Hard to sell me on the idea of an online life when service outages can just take everything away. At least with desktop tools I can see offline content.
If google or someone else could create an online store for feeds, and read vs unread items that I can synch from my desktop(s) that would be useful. On the road provide a nice UI. Perhaps google reader already does this. Don't know since I haven't checked it out.
As far as authenticated feed handling goes, I hope that if they add that feature, they handle it correctly. Some sites authenticate their feeds because it is a pay-for service. Google reader needs to consider the share feature in light of that.
I posted about this a few
I posted about this a few days ago, when they updated their interface.
The main downside for me is that you can't sort by oldest first, which means that if you come back from a weekend away from the computer, you have a pile of messages to read, going from the bottom up.
Other than that, it's great, and I'm sure we'll see lots of improvements.
never really liked the experience..
I heard they upgraded goog reader but the first release was enough to push me away. I've been using NewsHutch for some time now and its great. Very simple interface and elegant experience. Give it a try.
www.newshutch.com
hm... lemme know how it works out
I've been thinking about doing this as well... however, in addition to not supporting authenticated feeds (there goes all the stuff i need for work) ... what happens when you're on a plane?
some of my best feed catchup time is courtesy of air canada...
Partially switched
I switched partially after reading this, Boris. I now use Google reader for 'personal' stuff, and NetNewsWire for work and work-related feeds. Because of the authenticated feed thing, but mostly because I need to read every item, and I like Google Reader's river of news style for my personal feeds. Not so much for text, but for watching photo tags on Flickr, I prefer the river of news style.
(That's the thing with people who argue strongly for one style of aggregator over another. Neither seem to want to concede that there are groups of feeds people need to read everything from and other groups of feeds that people are more comfortable letting wash over.)
walkah needs to get on the WestJet gravy train: TV in every seat and ... well, that's about it. No frequent flyer plans, as far as I can tell. But for catching up on things before a flight, I pre-load a bunch of tabs in FF anyway. And that was while I was using NNW full-time.