Give Us One Minute

We catch a lot of grief from our family and friends because we tend to cover Mac only related software. Well today we’re breaking that trend by telling you that the best RSS reader is not found on a Mac. It’s not found on Windows and it’s not found on Linux either. It’s available for all platforms! If you are connected to “the tubes” and have a modern browser (Safari, IE or Firefox) you can subscribe, organize and read all your feeds using our new favorite RSS reader, wait for it…wait for it…Google Reader. There, we’ve said it!

So why have we given up on NetNewsWire, our previous favorite Mac RSS reader? Two reasons; cost and accessibility. We know what you’re thinking (we think). How can you give up on a Mac application in favor of an online application by Google? Give us one minute while we explain. How’s that for a branding segue (no…not that two-wheeled contraption that’s going to change the world…that would be Segway)?

Let’s discuss cost first. We purchased NetNewsWire for one reason and one reason only. Online syncing. See, we use several Macs in the course of our day. One at work, one a home and our laptops on the go. We tend to share each other’s Mac laptops should ours not be readily available. NetNewsWire remembers the feeds we’ve read and then sends that info to a server. When we log-on to another Mac and fire up NetNewsWire, it downloads that information and viola! We’re right where we left off. No reading duplicate feed entries. Several online reviewers have espoused other features of NetNewsWire as being ground breaking and that justify the cost; however, we didn’t notice that to be the case. Several Newreaders (Vienna and RSS Owl for instance) are as adept as NetNewsWire for basic reader functionality. However, it was always the syncing that got us to lay down our hard earned cash. Well no longer!

Google Reader gives us all the capabilities of NetNewsWire that we need and we find its interface and features to be more than sufficient. Google Reader also provides a nice set of keyboard shortcuts (and you know how we like our keyboard shortcuts) to allow us to move through our feeds at break neck pace. For fun and demonstration of these keyboard shortcuts, fire up Google Reader and type gu. Google Reader will display a pop-up listing all of your categories, or tags, in a sort of Quicksilver fashion. Type the first letter or two of the feed you are looking for and the listing narrows. See the image below for a visual. In our example we typed “f” and only the feeds that began with the letter f are displayed. Note that we have superimposed the results over the original search. Once you have the feed located, you can use your cursor key to quickly jump to a particular feed. Can’t do that with NetNewsWire. At least we haven’t found a way to do it.

Click image for larger view.
Now here’s the good part. Because it’s an online application, our settings are always the same no matter which computer we use whether it be Mac, Windows or Linux. Heck…it even works using our Wii Opera browser. What’s that we hear? What about reading our RSS feeds when not online? Surely you can’t do that with Google Reader. This is Google we’re talking about folks. If you are using Firefox (or IE 6.0+ if you are a Windows refugee) you can download the Google Gears add-on. This little piece of ninja software allows you to fire up Google Reader in Firefox and then simply select the little arrow surrounded by the green circle, as shown in the figure below.

Google Reader will download your RSS feeds locally while online. When you are on the go, say on your next flight or bus ride and you can’t connect to the “tubes”, you can take some time and review your feeds by simply firing up Firefox and entering the Google Reader address. Magically, Google Gears will load the Google Reader app from your hard-drive and any downloaded data. Of course you can’t click on the feed links because, well, you’re not online. But read the feeds you can. Take that NetNewsWire! And did we mention the cost for all of this Google goodness? Yep, you guessed it. FREE! We haven’t even seen any ads…yet. Take that again NetNewsWire!

There’s lots of other Google goodness to be found in Google Reader so be sure to point FireFox to http://www.google.com/reader and begin exploring this fabulous RSS reader. As far as reading RSS feeds, it don’t get any better than this folks. Select the link below and you will automatically be taken to Google Reader and subscribe to the GUOM feed all with one click.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/GiveUsOneMinute

Other good keystrokes to know to mow through your feeds.

n - move to the next post in the current feed
p - move to the previous post in the current feed

So what are your thoughts about Google Reader? Leave us some comments and let us know. We would love to read your feedback.

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