Thermometer

1. NewsFire
2. 139
3. Fast, unobtrusive design, lightweight
4. When reading items, going from one unread to the next sometimes takes you to the feed list again (annoying), no syncing (so I can’t use two computers easily), can’t think of a third

1. NetNewsWire
2. 309
3. Sidebar tabs, .Mac syncing, umm…Mac like interface?
4. Honestly, I’m not sure. I’m pretty happy with NNW.

• RSS Popper
• +/- 90
• is Free, I read feeds in my mail, it imports OPML
• cant see videos, kinda hard to manage feeds, nothing else

1. Net News Wire
2. 150++
3. Syncing with web, “Latest News” (all recent feeds in a one button to next interface), quickness of a cocoa application (vs web app)
4. Interface (prefer NewsFire simplicity / interaction), slow startup (to check syncing), no standard mac stuff for feed sidebar (can’t multiple select then click delete on keyboard to remove multiple feeds at one time)

Yikes. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be opinionated, but I figure I’m sure to use whatever you end up developing so I may as well get my opinion heard. Thanks for listening.

1. NetNewsWire
2. 75
3. Intuitive. Pretty fast. Good looking.
4. Duplication of articles. That’s it.

1. NNW
2. ~130
3. Syncing; iPhone web version; subscribing to protected feeds
4. Non-iPhone web version is clunky (and slow); otherwise, I’m happy with it.

1. NetNewsWire on my desktop, and its online companion NewsGator when mobile
2. About 20
3. I like consuming my feeds through a single, well-designed view of my choosing. I also like that it stays synched between my desktop and laptop and its web counterpart when I’m away. And that’s about it.
4. I don’t feel all that strongly about any aspect of it. It works, and I don’t experience it much beyond its most basic and obvious capabilities.

1. NewsFire
2. 45
3. The Space Bar, and it’s super clean
4. The flagging feature is horrible

1. I was using NewsFire
2. 127
3. Succinct interface
4. OMPL export/import, no custom styles, annoying interface details.

1. NetNewsWire.
2. 46
3. Ease of use; syncing across computers
4. No good place to start reading feeds, other than how I have them sorted (alphabetically, within groups)

1. NewsFire
2. ~200
3. Simple light weight interface gets out of my way.
4. No sync

1. NetNewsWire
2. 130
3. Speed, space bar and arrow navigation, syncing
4. All news is treated the same, meaning high signal-to-noise ratio. This is for all three of my last favorite. Managing and keeping up with the information out there is more of a chore than it should be.

1. NetNewsWire
2. 65
3. Syncs with NewsGator so I can access them from my iPhone. Quick keyboard navigation. Clippings for when I want to save something to read later.
4. Not as pretty as NewsFire. Downloads from within the application could be handled a little better (sometimes I wish I could just view videos enclosed in feeds within the app and have them deleted when I’m done).

1. Google Reader
2. 30
3. Web-based, I can save favorite articles and apply tags
4. I haven’t noticed any glaring issues. it does what I need it to do.

1. NewsFire
2. 30
3. Inbox containing all of my new feeds. Mark All Read button. Feed groups.
4. Navigation could be simpler. Perhaps less of a full application and more like a small utility.

1. NewsFire
2. 48 (I feel so nerdily inadequate)
3. Nice, simple, beautiful interface, it’s free, import/export OPML, seems light-weight
4. There’s not much I really dislike about but, but I used to use Google Reader, and the only feature I really miss is the ‘Similar Blogs’ feature that would show a couple of other blogs that I might like based on what I’m currently subscribed to, which I actually found some pretty cool stuff through. I also used RSS Menu at one point and I liked that I could put the app icon in the bar at the top of my screen rather than the dock, but I prefer NewsFire’s reading/display over going directly to the post in a browser.

1. NetNewsWire in Sync with Newsgator
2. 141
3. Syncing (can not live without it), Sorting, Speed
4. Design (it’s okay, but could be better), Memory-Footprint, Smaller Problems with updates of articles when they include umlauts or other non-English characters

1. NetNewsWire (OS X) & FeedDemon (PC)
2. 51
3. Syncing across computers and iPhone web version; Displays some stats about my feed reading habits so I can keep my feed count down
4. UI; Key commands are not unified across platfors;

1. NetNewsWire
2. 33
3. Free. View feed in program, including video/picture/flash content. Opens browser for full view on web page. Also the ability to save feed entries that have actually fallen off the official copy.
4. Refreshes feeds while not connected to the internet by instantly, silently failing. Other than that, not much.

Overall, the free, fast, and very Mac-like experience sold me.

1. Google Reader
2. 76
3. a) Accessible from almost any platform and computer. b) Very nicely integrated with all my other Google stuff, especially with the bar on top similar to 37 Signals’ OpenBar. c) The iPhone version is killer
4. a) Slow to load at times. b) ugly c) Sorting through feeds is a little clunky and underdeveloped but I’m usually fine with scrolling through all at once.

1. Google Reader
2. 193 (!)
3. • Web based (no need to sync between home and work computers).
   • Keyboard navigation (although just about all feed readers have this).
   • Easy to email entire articles (with images).
4. • You can’t subscribe to private (password-protected) feeds.
   • It’s not very pretty.
   • It’s a little tedious to subscribe to a new feed.

1. Google Reader
2. 95
3. Free, quick. Nice on the desktop. Love the Jon Hicks skin.
4. The mobile interface is awful. I use opera mini on my phone, but this interface is retro. Lots of my feeds have images and the mobile interface can’t display them at all.

1. NetNewsWire
2. 34 (If my sidebar overfills, I delete feeds because I hate having the scrollbar there.)
3. Ability to open links and stories in tabs, with a built in browser. And honestly, that’s it. I kinda just use it for that feature alone, and I don’t really care for much else.
4. I hate that a huge scrollbar comes up when I “over-fill” my feed list. I hate that the new version has tabs docked to the right side instead of the top (I purposely downgraded because of this). I hate that it’s called NetNewsWire (Camel case? Really?) I hate that it tries to get me to sign up for News gator every time I open it.

I really would switch to anything else in a heartbeat.

1. Google Reader
2. About 30
3. I can access it anywhere, I don’t need to switch applications when I’m using the web and want to read the feeds, it’s easy to organize
4. The UI isn’t always great. I would like to be able to output RSS-feeds from Google Reader itself (for example, be able to get a feed consisting of all feeds I have in a folder in Reader) for use elsewhere.

1. N.N.W.
2. 112
3. • Spacebar
   • Persistent tabs
   • Syncing (I don’t actually use it, but I like to know it’s there)
4. • I miss being able to set a feed to show the webpage rather than the xml text. I used this a lot back when I was using Netvibes.
   • Everything going through NG’s servers creeps me out just a little.

1. NetNewsWire
2. ~150
3. Space-bar to flip through each new feed item without ever having to use my mouse. Using keyboard only is a major thing.
4. Least favorite thing is shoddy support of things like flash and javascript.

1. NetNewsWire
2. About 70
3. Prefer desktop applications with syncing. Whether at work, at home, notebook or iPhone, my feeds are all synced. I like the “Post to del.icio.us” feature since I use that to post items I want to read or blog about later.
4. Design and metrics. I like how Google Reader shows you what your reading habits actually are. Good for when it comes pruning time.

1. NNW
2. 205
3. Favorites
   • Simplicity and attention to detail (behavior of single key commands, e.g. space bar behavior)
   • iPhone access complete with activity synchronization.
   • The inclusion of both a river of news view (Latest News) and regular feed-by-feed, item-by-item.
4. Dislikes
   • No undo for Mark As Read
   • Synching quirks (feeds reappearing after deletion, names reverting after modification, etc)
   • I spent as much time on this last bullet as I did the rest of this comment and I’ve got nothing. A good sign.

1. Google Reader
2. 390
3. Readable on iPhone, accessible from any computer, easy to add subscription with browser bookmarklet
4. Hard to subscribe to feeds when viewing on iPhone, sometimes buggy, inability to use private feeds in a protected way

1. Google Reader
2. 52
3. Likes:
   • Keyboard
   • Anywhere
   • Fast
4. Can’t read feeds that need authentication

1. Google Reader
2. 105
3. I can access it wherever I am and whatever computer I’m on. It works like I want it to, and it’s fast.
4. The design, and some functions I miss from other readers (e.g “Mark all as read and go to next tag”)

1. Google Reader
2. 140
3. Pros
   • It’s online. I can get to it anywhere I have a connection and pick up where I left off wherever I was the last time. No sync, no mess.
   • Space bar just works to chug through feeds.
   • Default styles for displaying feed content are smart and unobtrusive (the rest of the design is another story).
4. Cons
   • Design by Google - it’s not bad, it’s just not my style.
   • Too many features I don’t care about or find annoying (sharing items is annoying, trend data is kind of useless).
   • The interface for managing feeds is kind of a pain. I’m often looking for feeds to remove, and it’s not a nice experience.

1. Google Reader.
2. 186.
3. “Always on”; not tied to a particular machine; love how items get marked as read as I scroll past them.
4. The default UI’s horrendous; the keyboard shortcuts, they are non-intuitive; not crazy about the mobile interface.

1. Google Reader
2. 230
3. Accessible anywhere, iPhone and Wii versions, keyboard shortcuts.
4. No nested folders, problems with authenticated feeds and DOES NOT update feeds in real time (seems to be random lag time between when a item is published and when Reader recognizes it). Annoying!

1. Google Reader
2. 243
3. “Portable” across the computers I use. Decent keyboard shortcuts. Offline (via Gears) works well enough
4. Nav pane counts get out of sync. Only one level of “starring” (for flagging stuff for reading later).

1. NetNewsWire
2. 92
3. iPhone version, syncing between clients, keyboard shortcuts.
4. Slow startup, slow syncing, some read items aren’t synced consistently.

1. Google Reader
2. 117
3. Likes:
   • Accessible anywhere - I read news from too many places/devices.
   • Works with my web browser. Don’t have to leave my browser to subscribe
   • Can flag stuff for review later
4. Dislikes:
   • Would like to either flag for later, or archive for anal record-keeping
   • Would like similar functions to a ma.gnolia so I could easily share in a feed
   • No in-window previews (kind of like how NetVibes can do)

1. Google Reader
2. 27
3. online, fast, marks as read as you scroll
4. Safari’s rss button doesn’t work like firefox’s(not really a GR problem), tags show up in lists of subscriptions(really nags me), adverts and other UI elements take up too much space.

1. Google Reader
2. 146
3. Easy to search, Easy to add new feeds, Easy to get to from any device
4. Limited iPhone interface (new posts only), Memory hog (I end up having to close all browser windows to release), Trends page mostly not useful

1. NewsFire
2. 45
3. Fast, lightweight, new items float to the top
4. No syncing

1. Google Reader
2. 198
3. I can access it from anywhere, on just about any device. Suggestions of new feeds that are similar to those I’m already subscribed to. Unobtrusive design for content, but…
4. Not the nicest thing to look at. Counts get a little off at times. Slow to load a large number of images at once

1. Bloglines
2. 60
3. Accessible from anywhere, fast, simple
4. Can be annoying to add feeds, somewhat ugly, can’t think of a third

1. bloglines
2. 113
3. good desktop interface (which is the only place i use it)
4. a) it’s hard to ‘undo’ when i accidentally open a folder feed to get it to unread sate; i can ‘mark for read later’ but then later i have to manually unmark it
   b) search through ‘my feeds’ for something i remember seeing is sub-optimal
   c)… i can’t think of a ‘c’ right now. I’m fairly happy with bloglines.

1. NNW qualifies, but I haven’t “used” it in about 2 years (Newsfire/Google Reader were both tried, but didn’t solve the problems).
2. 60 now, over 200 before I tried paring them down, thinking it would solve the problem. It didn’t.
3. Trick question (there isn’t anything I like about any that I’ve tried, other than Newsfire’s attempt to keep things simple; the feed reader I’m using today is already head and shoulders above the others for me :)
4. NNW/NF/GR all fail for me for one reason: too much information, which results in guilt when I see the unread count keep climbing (much like email, feed readers haven’t scaled well at all). Keeping up with the news was easier when I just visited sites in the browser every few days, because I wasn’t really worried if I was missing anything (I knew someone would write about it, and I’d find out through the magic of hyperlinking).

1. NetNewsWire
2. 26
3. Navigate with keyboard, iphone synching (sorta), dock icon updates with new post number 4.no flash support, ugly, don’t really have a third one

1. Google Reader
2. ~70
3. Web based, fast, reliable
4. Web based, noisy visual design, I don’t feel productive

1. Bloglines Beta (first?)
2. 61
3. Marks items as read when I scroll past them, ability to mark item as unread OR pin it for later, keyboard shortcuts, ability to save items in a library for (much) later viewing.
4. Current bug doesn’t save all of my read items as read, so they reappear; no tagging ability (HUGE!).

1. Mail
2. 45
3. • No slowdown or extra app to run (NewsFire user on Tiger, but it ate ~ 300MB RAM)
   • incredibly fast to go through many posts with updown
   • can read right after e-mail without switching apps
4. • ugly layout/template
   • no flash support (some sites embed videos etc)
   • sometimes crashes b/c engadget loads ~400 articles

1. NetNewsWire
2. 358
3. The spacebar-navigation, the syncing, that little arrow-animation when you open an item.
4. Not having an “show me the last item I saw on screen, but mistakingly pressed the spacebar on, and made it disappear”-function, not being able to set auto-refresh to shorter than 30 min… (Really, I can’t think of three things I don’t like. IMO, NNW is almost the perfect app…)

1. google reader
2. 48
3. integrated into my iGoogle homepage
4. I can’t add feeds (or remove) from my iGoogle homepage

1. Google

2. About 80

3. I can either read individual sites or a hodge podge of all of them. It’s free. Relatively easy to use.

4. Kinda clunky layout. Wish I could get rid of the sections I don’t use. Wish I could ignore some sites from time to time without having them show up in the main folder.

1. Bloglines Beta
2. 97
3. • Web-based, integrated with Firefox, shows preview before adding
   • Folder sorting (manual or auto alpha)
   • Shows only new/updated, flag for later
4. • Back button is broken, can’t go back to previous feed (shows no new items)
   • Searching to find something I saw is nearly impossible
   • Images and videos sometimes don’t show

1. NetNewsWire
2. 102
3. Fast. Good interface. 100% Customizable Styles
4. Some articles duplication and Toolbar

1. NetNEwsWire
2. 80ish
3. Syncing across machines. Organization seems better than Google Reader. The UI is just more comfortable for me.
4. Can be a touch slow to sync items on close (when I’m in a hurry). Not a huge fan of the orientation of the tabs. Don’t really like the web-based portion (not as much as Google Reader).

1. Mainly Google Reader, but NetNewsWire has been tickling my fancy again. I’ll answer for Google Reader though
2. 191
3. That I can view all new posts as one long river - that it preloads the images for those posts (so no waiting) - and
4. It looks like ass - too many superfluous features (email this, tag this, share this) - no favicons

1. NNW
2. 277
3. Syncs online so I can view with my iPod Touch, which then syncs back to NNW when at the MBP. Brilliant. That’s number one. Number 2 the ability to open all tabs in my web browser with a single click. Widescreen baby. That’s #3.
4. Can’t close all the tabs with 1 click! The thumbnail preview is lame, wish keyboard shorts were more intutitive.

I had no idea you were involved in a feed reader. Looking forward to it.

1. NewNewWire
2. 338
3. Custom Sorting, Sync work home, Smart Feeds, Built-in Browser
4. Tough call; it would have to be extremely minor interface quirks I’d like different behavior for; otherwise I’m really happy with it.

1. NetNewsWire
2. ~140
3. keyboard shortcuts, widescreen view, imports/exports opml (ha!)
4. doesn’t pull in css file from source site (so i can read your blog in my reader and it would still look awesome — feed readers should do this!), not 100% keyboardable (I cant’ scroll down an individual feed item with the keyboard, I have to use the scroll bar), and the fact that I can’t edit my opml file and export just some feeds for friends.

1. NetNewsWire
2. around 150
3. clean UI + dinosaurs feed
4. losing focus when moving with keys

1. NetNewsWire/NewsGator
2. 60
3. Syncing between two Macs and the web. Easy to use. The visual feedback from right arrowing a feed to the browser.
4. It’s built in browser, but then I don’t have to use it (basically seems pointless to me). In all honesty not a lot wrong with my setup at the moment. Would be great if the online interface was a bit nicer though.

1. Google Reader
2. 72
3. Easily accessible (home/work/friends,mac/pc, don’t have an iphone yet though!) Quick/just works, and the stats/trends feature is pretty slick.
4. Interface could be better. Better automatic integration with del.icio.us,digg,magnolia.

1. NNW 3.1.3
2. 318
3. Syncing (via Newsgator), keyboard navigation (especially spacebar), finishing touches (arrow when loading link in browser, styles)
4. No syncing except via service (.mac or newsgator), Doesn’t collapse threaded feeds into conversations (forums mostly) (I don’t know if any feed reader does this), Doesn’t parse feeds for the same news (BBC, NYTimes and other news sites with the same AP articles all show up. Same with breaking tech news via ArsTechnica, Wired, and others)

1. NetNewsWire
2. 133
3. Syncing between multiple Macs and the web. Integrated browsing. Diffs on updated posts (it’s interesting to see what gets revised).
4. UI is not as clean and sexy as Newsfire. Open tabs and the order of my feeds don’t sync.

I switched from Newsfire to NetNewsWire primarily for its sync features.

1. N.N.W
2. 88
3. Syncing, built in browser, hosted service for viewing on iPhone, etc., super fast.
4. UI is kind of ugly, can’t reorder browser tabs, browser doesn’t render quicktime, no fourth

1. Google Reader
2. 86
3. Browser-based, so I can read feeds anywhere and they’re marked as read everywhere. Nice iPhone interface. Easy to subscribe to new feeds via a bookmarklet (works in MobileSafari even!)
4. Clunky style of interface (Hick’s GreaseKit skin helps, but they keep updating Google Reader and breaking it). Filing feeds into folders seems weird, I have some duplicates now.

1. NewsFire
2. 190
3. Easy to use, pretty.
4. Lack of syncing capabilities

1. Google Reader
2. 98
3. • Available Everywhere
   • iPhone Interface
   • Ease of use
4. • Can’t sort the subscriptions alphabetically, just drag and drop
   • Have to remember to go in “offline” mode to use without internet (e.g. planes)
   • No authed feeds support.

1. NewsFire
2. 169
3. Likes:
   • Pretty,
   • works the way I like it to work,
   • I like Watanabe.
4. Dislikes:
   • No sync (but that’s not really a problem since I’ve got only one computer)

1. NetNewsWire
2. 160 feeds
3. It syncs data to Newsgator or my FTP server, it lets me organize my feeds, and saves passwords in the Keychain.
4. It doesn’t “learn” anything about what I like and what I don’t care about, the web version from Newsgator that syncs with the desktop software is not worth my time, I waste too much time marking things “read” that I didn’t really want to read anyway.

1. Google Reader w/gReader
2. 69
3. It’s my homepage. With the add-on it’s aesthetically pleasing. It’s widely supported when subscribing.
4. It’s web-based. It’s another great product by Google. There’s functionality to it that I don’t use.

1. NetNewsWire.
2. 221.
3. Mature UI, fast, great tabbed browsing.
4. Sync is good but not perfect, no iPhone native version (but then it’s not June yet).

1. Monkeychow.
2. 254
3. Fast rendering, feeds update frequently, easy to use
4. not pretty, hard to set up, needs work

1. NetNewsWire
2. 28
3. Good design, inline browser, syncing.
4. The type in the left column is using standard antialising instead of subpixel.

1. Google Reader
2. 57
3. Web-based, iPhone-specific mobile interface, and the ability to “star” articles for later review (rather than leave them “unread”).
4. Definitely not the most aesthetically pleasing interface, the mobile version is prone to “server errors”, and it does not support OpenID.

1. NNW
2. 71
3. a) Syncing read/unread/flagged status on laptop and iPhone; b) Keyboard shortcuts, such as the ability to move around the entire app and all the lists with just the arrow keys; and c) flagging/clipping of articles I want to read later.
4. I can’t really think of any. I really love NNW. Though the nature of it necessitates un-bolding sprees if I go longer than 24 hours without checking in on it. 71 feeds is about max for me, and really I need to slim that down.

1. Google Reader
2. 21
3. a) Easy to add feeds, b) easy to sort feeds, c) shows number of unread in the page title.
4. a) No one-click “Mark all as unread” button. b) If you’re viewing a feed with multiple unread items and click the top one to read, the articles below it get pushed out of view if the current article is lengthy. So to read those you have to close the current article and then proceed. c) N/A

Other Features:

I would love to see a decent sized screen shot of each site associated with its RSS feed in the reader. But that’s probably because I would rather read it on the site than in a reader. Also, take all my comments with a grain of salt because I’m not a heavy RSS user.

Looking forward to seeing the completed project!

1. NetNewsWire
2. 300+
3. Ease of use, particularly the keyboard navigation.
4. It freezes when there are embedded YouTube videos (on Mac OS X 10.4.11).

1. Google Reader
2. 90
3. web-based (access from any computer, always in sync), can star articles to read later or are favorites, able to categorize feeds
4. ugly, no favicons, ugly

1. NetNewsWire
2. 50ish
3. Synch
4. Synch, cause it often doesn’t work. Feeds that have low subscriber numbers are only updated through synch once or twice a day. That means that my global basecamp feed—which is unique to me and therefore only has one subscriber—can’t be synched, because then it only updates once a day. I also object to the idea that somehow “less popular” feeds are updated less often than more popular ones.

I would also really like a way to set priorities for feeds. So, feeds that I need to stay current all day long (like basecamp) would update every 5 minutes, but feeds which I really shouldn’t be reading while at work (like, for example, dooce) would only update once a day. Or wouldn’t contribute to the dock count.