Do you use RSS? Do you know what that is?
For those of you who do not know, Wikipedia defines RSS as a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works – such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video – in a standardized format.
In short, there are a bazillion excellent blogs out there on the web today, and the easiest way to stay on top of all of the content provided therein is the RSS technology. (read the rest of the Wiki entry HERE.)
For example, this FoleyPod eZine site that you’re reading right now is a blog, and you’ll notice my own RSS icon over on the right, and at the top of the page. By employing an RSS Reader, one can click on that RSS icon and subscribe to a blog; the RSS Reader software will alert you when your subscribed blogs are updated with new, or edited content.
There are many excellent RSS reader applications out there for you to use. In fact, Safari and FireFox both have RSS functions built right into them, as does your Mac Mail application. Many of my colleagues prefer to use the web-browser-based Google Reader, which is one of many free cloud applications offered by Google.
I’ve never really enjoyed Google Reader very much, for a couple of reasons. First, I’m extremely underwhelmed with it’s look and feel. Google applications are certainly not known for their slick interface, and let’s be honest, I’m a sucker for a slick-looking application that’s easy to use and looks cool. There’s a reason that I’m an avid Mac fanboy. There’s a reason I own an iPhone. It’s all about the User Interface!
By way of example, here’s a screenshot of Google Reader’s ugly interface:
The second reason that I’m not a big fan of Google Reader as an RSS application is that I still have not been able to fully support “cloud computing.” I often find myself with my laptop somewhere that does not have a reliable internet connection, and in that period, getting any work done is impossible if you’re relying on cloud applications overmuch. Perhaps I’m just old-fashioned…
The upside of using Google Reader is that it’s a very solid program. Being that it’s Google, it offers additional features that most other RSS applications do not, such as the ability to deliver targeted Keyword Alerts right to your RSS reader. Let’s say that you’re very very interested in Soy Milk. You can add a keyword alert for “Soy Milk” to your Google Reader, and it will deliver up any article published to the web and indexed by the Google engine, in real-time.
This feature alone is a pretty compelling reason to use Google Reader. What better way to stay up on a particular topic than Google keyword alerts?
Anyway,
I’ve always been a really big fan of News Gator’s NetNews Wire application. The interface is great. It’s setup very much like iTunes or Mac Mail is. It has a very “Mac OSX” feel to it, and new blog posts are delivered right into your left-hand sidebar, just as your new mail comes into your inbox in Mail.
Well, NetNews Wire just got a LOT better. First, NewsGator has just released a brand new iPhone app, optimized for iPhone 3.0, and now NewsGator for Mac and for iPhone now sync to each other via Google Reader. Now you get the best of both worlds: you get a great looking, easy to navigate RSS reader for your Mac desktop and for your iPhone, and you get the awesome functionality of Google Reader.
Why Sync? If you’re anything like me, you’ve got about 80 (yes really) blogs that you follow every day/week/month. Now, I naturally don’t read every single blog post that gets published to all of these sites; I just read the stories which interest me. The power of synced RSS readers is that when I read, or skip a story on NetNews Wire for my Mac, it reports my activity up to the Google Reader servers, so later that day, when I have a few minutes between meetings, and I pull out my iPhone to catch up on a few blog posts, I don’t have to deal with reading or skipping that same story again. This sync works the other way as well. Stories read on the iPhone app will not show up in your Desktop app unless you bookmark them for later, or add them to your Clippings folder.
The NetNews Wire product page provides a complete list of features:
The product features:
- Access to RSS feeds from your iPhone
- iPhone-native user interface
- Centralized access to your feed list and folders along with an indicator of how many unread news items are associated with each feed or folder
- Feed list shows title and time of most recent post to quickly highlight the most recent article
- “Next Unread” button, which goes from story to story with a quick tap of a single button
- Google Reader sync including Starred items synchronization
- Twitter integration – send your favorite articles as tweets
- Instapaper integration – save pages for later reading in your browser
- New application icon (um.. yippee?)
- Latest News view – gives a “river of news” showing the articles from the last 24 hours
- Great new article view – better handling of images in articles
- New up and down arrows for navigating through your news list
- Richer display: title and date of most recent item on Feeds screen. Excerpts and dates on news item lists
- Send articles via email without leaving NetNewsWire
In past articles, I’ve talked about the power of server-synced content. I’ve reviewed applications such as Evernote, and Things. Both sync between their respective desktop and iPhone apps which prevents the double-handling of information, provides immediate access to the information that is important to you no matter where you are.
Along these lines, I also use the IMAP protocol for my email, which is to say that my Mac Mail syncs with my iPhone via my mail server to protect me from having to delete the same email message in two places.
The relevance of using a synced RSS reader is that you are now able to choose what news comes to you. The old newspaper model is disappearing fast, and is being replaced by exactly this kind of technology. I for one support this method very much, because in the past I’d have to subscribe to dozens if not hundreds of newspapers to access all of the content I now enjoy through RSS technology.
Now I can decide what subjects I learn about, and I can organize them all inside of a single “newspaper,” one that lives on my computer and on my iPhone, and gets delivered to me the moment that the story has been uploaded. I like that a lot. If you do too, check out NetNews Wire HERE. It’s great, and what’s more, it’s FREE.
Thanks for reading. Questions, issues, comments? Leave a comment below!
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~ Chris
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