FeedDemon vs. GoogleReader
For the last few days, I have been pondering a move away from GoogleReader and back towards FeedDemon. For somebody who writes about webapps as much as I do, that move must seem almost blasphemous. However, I have become more and more frustrated with the latency of Google’s feed reader. It can often take hours for posts to appear – even from blogs with hundreds of subscribers. If you are trying to write about breaking news, it just doesn’t help when it takes an hour and a half or three hours before you get to read a post.
Here is what I like about Google Reader:
- no worries about synching between machines
- Shared Feeds
- the way it handles link blogs
- endless scrolling and the fact that a post that has scrolled by is automatically marked as read
- simple, fast interface
What I don’t like:
- latency
- no option to filter feeds by keywords etc.
- latency…
What I like about FeedDemon:
- powerful filtering mechanisms (‘watches’)
- lots of different layout options
- fast
- synchs with Newsgator and other machines
- updates feeds when I tell it to
- easy to create linkblogs
- ‘Popular Topics’: your own personal TechMeme based on the feeds you read
What I don’t like:
- no endless scroll, but pages
- doesn’t mark feeds read automatically, but only when you switch pages or feeds (depending on the options you set)
- linkblog isn’t recognized as such in GoogleReader and isn’t accepted by ReadBurner and RSSMeme (LinkRiver does accept it, though)
- doesn’t recognize linkblogs and hence shows items more than once
- online interface at NewsGator is nice, but doesn’t rival GoogleReader.
Because I enjoy keeping my linkblog groomed, I really don’t want to switch away from GoogleReader, but in the end, the advantages of using a desktop client just outway that. For the time being, I’m going to use the awkward approach of using GoogleReader to keep the linkblog going, but using FeedDemon for the doing the actual reading.
In the end, using a desktop client just gives me more flexibility and control than using a web app.
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