FeedDemon 3 is ready for public use, after months spent in a beta version that saw a confusing migration from proprietary online syncing to Google Reader.
That rough patch sorted, FeedDemon remains one of the best desktop RSS and Atom feed catchers. This version contains a lengthy list of changes, including greatly enhanced Twitter connectivity, a tweaked interface that's a bit easier to use, and better tagging and sharing.
My Twitter stream in FeedDemon 3.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)FeedDemon has dumped its proprietary synchronization site, Newsgator.com, in favor of syncing with Google Reader. New users won't notice, but older users are likely to lose many unread feeds, since Google can't import feeds with more than 10 unread items. Once synced with Google Reader, unread feeds can again include more than 10 items.
There's also a new, persistent ad placed in the lower-left corner of the interface, and FeedDemon's performance could be a lot better--RAM usage was hefty, and 3GB of RAM didn't prevent occasional program hang-ups.
Twitter feed reading has been baked in because FeedDemon supports authenticated feeds. Hyperlinking and short-URL expansion are automatic, and if you use Twitter as a live news stream, FeedDemon's Twitter link sharing should appeal to you. To set that up, you need to subscribe in FeedDemon to your Twitter feed here.
Tagging, tag clouds, and item sharing get a massive overhaul in FeedDemon 3, with all three features added to the item view and a tag cloud added to the Subscriptions Home view. The interface will look similar to FeedDemon 2.8, but there are many little tweaks to improve its usability.
Flags have been renamed Stars for Google Reader consistency, for example, while the Home page features videos, pictures, and content from your feeds. One smart improvement over Google Reader is that you can view your starred feeds in the folders they came from, instead of in a single "starred items" folder.
We'd like to see performance addressed in future versions, but overall, FeedDemon remains a favorite option for desktop feed management. Let us know your thoughts on the new FeedDemon in the comments below.
If you're a frequent Google Reader user, you know full well that user comments on blog posts do not come along for the ride. On some blog feeds, it can tell you how many user comments there are, but on others, you typically have to visit the post to know.
A new solution called GReactions has attempted to fix this by slurping up comments from around the Web that are related to the post you're looking at. When it works, it's a seamless experience.
The Firefox extension is powered by Context Voice, which does the dirty work. This service tracks related conversation in places like Twitter, Digg, Reddit, WordPress blogs, and FriendFeed. It then clumps together those bits of conversation it picks up, and orders them chronologically.
To help sort through this mess, the tool lets you filter by source. You're also given a time line, which breaks down when each comment or mention is from.
GReactions sucks in comments from a variety of sources. Here it's grabbing them from Twitter, WordPress and FriendFeed.
(Credit: CNET)In my brief testing with it installed, it was most useful with older content that had been given a chance to be passed around the Web. Newer items, especially from niche blogs, had no related discussion.
For heavy Google Reader users, this is an extension that's definitely worth installing. It doesn't actually do any of its magic until you hit the "comments" button that's added to the Google Reader interface when installed. This means it's not going to slow down the initial load of your feed, or interfere with things like Gears.
Google continues to run its own internetwork comment system on top of blog posts, which can only be seen by other Google Reader users. So short of visiting each site to see what other users are talking about, this is the next best way to quickly eyeball user discussion.
RSS and Atom feed catcher NewsGator has published a pre-release version of their long-awaited and controversial FeedDemon 3.0. The update to one of the most popular desktop feed readers is abandoning the NewsGator proprietary synchronization site at newsgator.com in favor of syncing with Google Reader, and the transition--along with the forced obsolescence of several features that aren't available from Google.
To synchronize a FeedDemon folder with Google Reader, users must go to the folder properties window.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Overall, FeedDemon 3.0.0.27 offers the smoothest synchronization experience yet, but it's still rife with problems. Because of a Google Reader limitation, feeds will only sync the most recent 10 unread items. If you've got 11 or more unreads in a single feed, the process will mark the oldest one as read. Once a feed has been synced, then its unread count can climb above 10.
The synchronization of FeedDemon's "flags" to Google Reader's "stars" has been imperfect, as well. The sync is imperfect, with some flagged items not becoming starred when they appear in Google Reader. Also, the newly imported starred items in Google Reader lack the tags that associate them with your folder structure, forcing you to manually tag each one according to the folder name you want it to appear in.
Although those are big problems for the synchronization process, it's a definite improvement from the previous beta versions, which encouraged readers to convert their feeds while a bug-crippled conversion process was still in place.
There's more in this pre-release version than syncing improvements. A new Quick Tag menu for assigning post pre-existing tags on the fly has been added, as has the space bar as a keyboard command for advancing to the next post. As previously announced, this version removes automatic feed pre-fetching as a feature, and other stability and bug-fixes. This version feels like it starts up a bit faster, too.
If you're new to FeedDemon and like keeping browser resources down, the synchronization between Google Reader and FeedDemon should be flawless, or at least nearly so. Pre-existing FeedDemon users, however, face an uphill and tedious battle to everything that should be synced into Google Reader before Aug. 31: that's when newsgator.com stops syncing.
As FeedDemon closes in on finalizing the code for version 3, FeedDemon 3 RC 4 abandons its proprietary online synchronization at newsgator.com. The fourth release candidate syncs only with Google Reader, as FeedDemon's creator Nick Bradbury announced it would last week.
FeedDemon 3 RC 4 syncs with Google Reader faster and more cleanly than RC 3, but users with high unread counts will still lose most unread feeds.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Bradbury has stated in blog posts and forum messages that he hopes this will open FeedDemon to a wider audience, but the road to prepare FeedDemon for Google Reader has not been a smooth one. Many fans of the program have expressed frustration with the loss of features such as authenticated feeds and synced clippings.
In FeedDemon 3 RC 4, the synchronization scripts have been re-written to be faster and more accurate, and those changes show when compared to the third release candidate. The fourth RC only used 42 MB of RAM, as well. However, the conversion process won't be able to handle large numbers of unread posts, and limits the unread count to 10 per RSS feed. This is because Google Reader is limited to considering only 10 feeds unread from the past 30 days when subscribing.
Most of the other improvements in this release candidate are geared towards streamlining the conversion process to Google Reader. There's a new startup option to convert NewsGator subscriptions to Google Reader, and there's a link to create a Google Account from the Google Account window. Tags have gained prominence over clippings in the new version. Clippings will exist only if grandfathered in from a previous version.
The publisher of popular RSS readers FeedDemon and NetNewsWire is ditching its proprietary online RSS synchronization in favor of Google Reader. Newsgator's eponymous online service will cease on August 31..
Soon, Google Reader will be the only online synchronization option for Newsgator users.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)When the beta version of FeedDemon updated earlier this year with the ability to synchronize to either Newsgator or Google Reader, fans of the program rejoiced. Google Reader synchronization, the company says, was one of the most requested features for the Newsgator desktop clients. They have instructions for users who need to move their feeds to Google.
Google Reader may frustrate some, but it has far more users than Newsgator. Newsgator says that this was the main impetus for ditching the Newsgator synchronization for Google, but it's also using the opportunity to revamp its product line.
Along with Google Reader synchronization for FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, and the NetNewsWire iPhone app, Newsgator will discontinue Newsgator Online, Newsgator Go!, Newsgator Inbox, the Newsgator browser toolbar, and the desktop notifier. Several features in the desktop apps that depended on the proprietary syncing service will also cease to function at the end of August. If you use the blogroll, ratings or headlines features, Newsgator recommends removing them from any Web site they're used on by August 31. The shared clipping feature will transition into Google Reader's analogous feature.
Despite its popularity, one feature that Google Reader doesn't support that Newsgator does is authenticated feeds. For people who used Newsgator solely for that feature, their opprobrium on message boards and in comment threads is palpable. Interestingly, the last answer in the Newsgator transitioning FAQ points to another reason for the switch: a growing emphasis from the company on their enterprise-based business.
Newsgator recommends that all FeedDemon and NetNewsWire readers upgrade to the beta builds before August 31, since only those latest versions contain the Google Reader option. It gave no word on when the beta builds would finish development, but readers who want the current stable builds can get them for Windows and Mac.
Newsgator pushes its popular RSS reader FeedDemon into release candidate status, introducing some new features and fixing bugs from the previous beta version.
The big news for FeedDemon 3 came with the fourth beta, which introduced Google Reader synchronization. That feature did not come without bugs, and continued to be refined through the beta development. Several fixes in the release candidate fix Google Reader synchronization bugs, including properly marking starred items as flagged in FeedDemon, syncing tags, and marking feeds disabled. Another big repair to FeedDemon's Google Reader behavior fixes an error that prevented users who had nonalphanumeric characters in their Google password from logging in.
One useful new feature in the release candidate is a hot key for e-mailing an item. Hit "E" on your keyboard when reading an item, and FeedDemon will open up a new message window in your default e-mail client. I found this integration to be smooth and faster than I'd anticipated. FeedDemon fans will notice that this feature takes over the hot key for opening an item in an external browser, so the new hot key to do that is "X."
FeedDemon 3 RC1 can also be set to launch when Windows loads, and the installation process gains an "express" mode for quick installing. After using the FeedDemon 3 beta for the past month, I've found it to be work well for a beta, with few crashes and a faster overall experience.
The changelog for FeedDemon 3 can be read here.
Users of Google's Desktop software have a new first party widget to play with. This one lets you use most of Google Reader's features without having to fire up your browser. It puts Google Reader's source list in your sidebar where you can peruse feeds you're subscribed to and read individual stories in a small pop-up window that slides out across your screen.
The widget works both in Google Desktop's dock and "popped out" on its own. Between the two, I prefer it off the dock since you can see more of the feeds and stories at once without having to change the height and width of your sidebar; something that can affect the look and feel of other widgets.
One major drawback is that it can't yet properly display HTML-formatted feeds, meaning some of your feeds will be left unreadable with images and page formatting stripped out. However, just like in Google Reader proper, you can simply click on the headline to hop to it on its original site.
I also found performance on this widget to be a tad sluggish. It doesn't provide the instant feedback you get in the browser. For instance, clicking on my source list of feeds and seeing them appear took about two or three seconds. The same goes for any time you drill down to see any feed's list of stories.
Early flaws aside, there is a serious convenience factor here. You can keep an eye on your feeds no matter what you're doing, and read entire articles without the need to launch another app or be signed in with a specific Google account back in the browser.
The Google Reader Google Desktop widget lets you read your RSS feeds in widget form.
(Credit: CNET)If you like Google Reader, but would prefer to keep it from taking up an oh-so-important tab in your browser, you'll definitely like GReader Popup. This experimental Firefox extension pulls up a version of Google Reader that sits atop any page you have open. You can plow through feeds using all the usual keyboard shortcuts you would in Google Reader. Then, when done, you simply click the icon in the bottom right hand corner of your browser and it goes away.
No fuss, no tab switching, and most importantly--more real estate in your browser for extra tabs.
It's a wonderfully simple tool, and built off the same idea behind GCal Popup, which does the same thing but for Google Calendar. With both installed you can hop to specific Google apps from any page, using the bottom part of your browser like an application launcher, or by learning the two-button keyboard shortcut that pulls it up.
My one qualm is that it does a hit or miss job at resizing Google Reader to fit your browser. I had parts of the interface cut off, even when running it on a 1600x1050 screen. If you're trying it out on a small laptop or Netbook this can be a deal-killer.
GReader Popup puts Google Reader on top of any page you're on.
(Credit: CNET Networks)This Firefox extension should appeal to anybody trying to minimize bookmark and open tab clutter. Read It Later gives you a one-click option for saving the links and keeping track of which ones have been read. It also now sports deep integration with Google Reader, adding little check marks next to blog posts. Clicking one lets you mark it to read later on.
When you first start the extension, it will prompt you to install the two Toolbar buttons that are used to control the extension and manage your reading list. Users can also control adding bookmarks to their reading list via the context menu, the Bookmarks menu itself, or with hot keys, making access to your daily detritus fast and painless. The toolbar button "Read This Page Later" is great for adding loaded URLs, while the "R" plus left-click hot key was easiest for saving links.
The second Toolbar button manages your "Read something later" list. Click to open a saved page, or hit the drop-down list for more choices. Saved pages can be opened in a new tab or the current one, you can open the entire reading list into new tabs simultaneously, and you can also set the button to open pages randomly or in order. You can also set the bookmark folder that pages are saved to, and users who really want to explore the extension's abilities can play around with the less-stable Offline reading option.
Read It Later ran smoothly and glitch-free, and it is exceptionally useful at simultaneously killing Firefox tab clutter, ditching the anchor that drags on your RAM use, and improving your reading habits. Now, if only you could remember everything that you read, right?
Firefox Extension Read It Later pushed out a big update on Thursday which adds deep integration with Google's Reader product. With the new version installed, a little check box shows up on the left of every single feed item, which you can simply click on to mark for later reading. Previously the only way to do this would be to open up the actual site from Google Reader, then click the Read It Later button.
The new Read it Later extension adds little check marks next to blog posts. Clicking one lets you mark it to read later on.
(Credit: CNET Networks)To make going through that list of saved stories more manageable, you can now sort it by PostRank--a service we checked out back in July. Using this, Read It Later will tell you which of your stories are most worthy of your time based on things like traffic, user comments, and sharing on social news sites.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
PostRank may not dictate which stories are really the best, but if you're an RSS newbie with a lot of feeds this is a nice editorial add-on. If you really like its recommendations, you can also install a separate extension which shows each item's PostRank right in Reader.
One of my favorite parts of Read It Later is that your saved list of stories can be accessed from multiple devices using a centralized RSS feed. You can access this feed from any browser (including Safari on the iPhone), and save items for later on using nothing more than a bookmarklet.
The quiet killer feature of this extension is still its offline viewing functionality. There's a new option to automatically have things saved to your browser cache, instead of having to select them one at a time. Under the old system, items you had not selected for download would appear dimmed out when attempting to view them without a connection. Combine that with offline Reader access using Gears and you can fill up a flight or long train ride with plenty of feed reading.
(via ReadWriteWeb)
