B. Mann Consulting

Seems I set off a bit of an avalanche of feed reader switching (and lots of comments on the first post), so I thought I would post an update.

Short answer: it's working for me, and this is almost entirely due to how well the mobile mode works. I can now easily fit feed reading into a few spare moments. Starring items is how I mark them for followup. 

I do have some issues / wishlist items for Google Reader...but rather than list them, I'll send you off to read Jame Healy, who has a great wishlist (and he just fell in love with Google Reader Mobile). I actually found a bit of a solution to the whole del.icio.us sharing issue: Gordita. That link, thanks to Bill Burcham, will create a bookmarklet for you that will let you bookmark items in del.icio.us from your Google Reader page. Now I can go through and bookmark all my starred items.

Alex Harford wants "oldest first" ordering.

Greg Fox doesn't trust online-only apps (comment):

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.

Re: online only. With my new "business class" mobile phone (and, er, my grandfathered unlimited data Fido account), there are very limited places where I am truly "offline". I agree that more offline or synch services are warranted...but we're still in early days for feed reading in general. Troy Angrignon and Paul Kedrosky have some offline/online thoughts lately.

Your point about "sharing" of for-pay features is, I think, the same as for any other reader: I can easily re-post or otherwise share that content. 

I actually was checking out the Gmail - Google Reader integration via a Greasemonkey script...but this won't work for me. I use mainly my "business" email which is Bryght's Gmail for Domains....but then it tries to use THAT version of my "identity" for Reader, as well. Hey, Google, did I mention you're STILL really screwed up about identity? 

Lastly, I still need something on my desktop for authenticated feeds. I'm going to try out a few other readers to see if they fit this very specific task. My interaction with these feeds are primarily of the sort where it's *really* important whether or not I've actually read them...that is, more like a "to do" list rather than the information trawling I do with my main public feed subscriptions. On the list so far are NewsFire (not free, but gorgeous UI) and RSSOwl (free, open source, cross platform, and home page built with Drupal :P).

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. 

I made this post originally with Blogplanet, a Java app for mobile. It may end up being one of the few mobile apps that I actually keep around.

But what do I mean about mobile apps vs. the mobile web? Well, we talk a lot about web applications, but we usually think about a full desktop and browser supporting them. The mobile web can be thought of as being the web optimized for mobile devices, or we can think about how web-based applications should be evolving to work well with mobile devices.

Then there are mobile apps. Many of them are, indeed, written in Java for that mythical write once run anywhere, although in the mobile world it's more like write once, endlessly test, tweak, and optimize everywhere. The platform specific apps tend to be richer and more polished -- e.g. Series 60 apps for the vast variety of Symbian phones out there. ShoZu is a pretty good example, but even there, there is Seres 60 vXX where incompatibilities creep in.

So, I've been using both the mobile web and mobile apps on my new E61. And the mobile web is winning. Much of that is due to Google.

Gmail? Works great in HTML (*not* mobile) mode using the built in browser. Google Reader has a mobile friendly mode. Google Maps actually doesn't work very well / at all, and I actually used Mapquest. But, then there's a mobile app for this -- downloadable Google Maps for Mobile. Chalk one point up for mobile apps.

So why would I use Gmail instead of the built in email client? Which I could even configure with Blackberry push email? Well, one reason is that Gmail for domains is my main email, and I heavily label / sort my email. On the mobile, using POP3, it just grabs everything.  I don't see myself using the built in email client until Gmail (or another system I use) supports IMAP.

Going forward, the browser on my mobile device will, like the desktop, continue to be the most important application on there. Are you developing for mobile? Well, forget it...you're developing for the web, some of it just happens to have slightly smaller screens.