I think that might be my longest title of the year!
Well, as many of you know, I’m still pretty new to the secret world of blogging, but as I’ve been learning the ropes, I’ve also been discovering all the other cool blogs out there! Seeing what’s new on them is now part of my daily routine but unfortunately as my list of favorite blogs has grown, I have found myself spending quite a bit of time visiting them all. And SO I decided that it was high time to start subscribing to my favorite blog feeds because then (in theory at least) I should be able to see what’s new in a fraction of the time. Only problem is, I didn’t have any idea as to what reader I should use! To alleviate this problem, I decided I would use three popular ones and pit them against each other in a no-holds-barred winner take all! (my feeds that is)
First up was Google Reader (reader.google.com).
First off, it reminds me a lot of gmail’s interface, which is a good thing in my book. I use gmail on a daily basis, and the familiar feel immediately put me at ease. Furthermore, getting started adding feeds couldn’t be easier. All I have to do is click the “Add Subscription” link on the left of the page and I can paste a web addy. For purposes of this little thang, I put in my own site, and up comes all my posts – lickety split fast, images and all. Unsubscribing is also easy, just click on the “Feed Settings” on the top right and then click “Unsubscribe”. So yeah, I like Google Reader a lot – It does exactly what I want it to do, and I don’t even have to install software for it. Only thing though is that on the left pane where subscriptions are, it just says the subscription name. … I would really like it if there was a dropdown with the names of all the posts in the feed, that way I wouldn’t have to scroll all the way down in the reading pane to see every post in a feed. But you can’t have it all right?Second to bat is Omea Reader from JetBrains (
www.jetbrains.com/omea/reader/).
This little baby is it’s own program so you will have to download a file and install the program which is simple enough. Initially when Omea came up, I was a little intimidating, especially coming from Google Reader’s very simple interface. Nevertheless, I went forward and tried to subscribe to a feed. It took me a second longer this time to find the button to do it (small button named “Subscribe” at the top of the reader pane) but again, pretty painless after that.After getting my hands dirty a bit, Omea Reader really reminds me of Microsoft Outlook in terms of presentation, and again that’s not a bad thing. It’s certainly not the stripped down web app that Google Reader is, but it has a lot more in it that you’ll be able to do and for some users they will immediately feel at home especially if familiar with Outlook. By default, feeds are listed in the left pane and are separated from each other like folders/inbox or what have you in Outlook. Furthermore, when you click on a feed, the available feeds are then displayed immediately to the right of this pane again, like messages in your inbox. (And also again, this kind of feature seemed to be missing from Google Reader). From here you can go up and down and see all the nice posts available to you.So I like Omea too, and even after 10 minutes of using it, I immediately get the feel of, “This is what you use when you’re serious about feeds”. But you know what, I’m not gonna lie. I think there are probably 50 minutes more worth of features (relatively speaking) in this product. It’s obvious you can do a lot with this, and I’ve only scratched the surface here.
And rounding up the bunch we have Thunderbird from Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/).
This one, like Google Reader and Firefox is clean and straight forward but unlike Google Reader and Omea, it’s probably primarily used for e-mail so don’t expect it to immediately say to you, “Put an RSS in Me!” But that’s ok, because it’s really no trouble to get started. In the left pane, if you click on “News & Blogs”, you can then choose “Manage subscriptions” from the main pane. From here though is where I have big ol frown. (#):(A dialog box will come up named RSS Subscriptions. If you want to add a feed, you click the “Add” button and then add the feed. BUT WAIT. You have to add the EXACT location of the feed. If I try putting in “bushmackel.com” I get NADA. This SUCKS. So after you manage to get the exact URL of a feed you add it in right? Well, if you want to delete it, you can’t just click on the name of the feed and delete because that’s not really the feed, but it’s folder. … I guess. But then when I open the folder to what I guess is the REAL feed and hit “Remove”, it’s still freaking there. ARRRRRGH! Ok, so aside from that – How’s the reading part?Well, um, I think it’s crappy. You pull up a post title, and it pulls up the whole freaking site in the browser. Which means you have to wait for it to load sans a summary! This is exactly what I was trying to avoid. From a webmaster’s point of view, I guess it’s good especially if you want impressions for stats and ads and the like, but from the feed reader’s point of view, it’s a pain in the ASS. So you can guess what I’m giving this one : Two big thumbs down!
So to sum up my feelings amongst the three, I hate Thunderbird. Even though it has a simple and clean presentation, it doesn’t seem to work right and I could accomplish the same thing by just bookmarking the sites and organizing them well in the bookmarks section of my browser. As far as Reader and Omea, I think it’s a tie somewhat. For what I set out to do, Google Reader does it. Granted it doesn’t do much else, but I didn’t want anything else! Omea does what I want it to do, but it looks a bit more complicated than what I would want. On that note though…It looks a bit more complicated because it has more functionality in it! So yeah, if you want to go at it barebones style, go with Google Reader, otherwise check out Omea. (IMHO of course)
Anyone else want to chime in with readers they like? Let us know! All of us could use your help!
June 19th, 2007 at 4:58 am
I use the Google Reader now (useful since I look at feeds both at work and at home, so the list is synchronized since its hosted online) but I use to use the Sage plugin for Firefox:
http://sage.mozdev.org/
It’s pretty nice, loads fast and still works with embedded youtube videos and the like.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Online readers are far and away the best. Google Reader is my choice as well. Two big convenient factors:
1. I can use my Google Account which means one less account to worry about.
2. I can use my Google Account Anywhere.
Good comparison anyway.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
While Google reader is nice, personally, I have a million Google accounts floating around…Not by choice, more out of necessity. Even though I could just pick one account for Reader and just use that, it would still have to suck to have to log out of that account and log back in another. (But again, that’s more on me and is probably not a problem for most other people).
I actually checked out Sage like Brad suggested, and I really like it. No accounts and online! Best of all words eh LISTIKAL? (#):)
June 20th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I feel Google Reader is the best but i haven’t tried other web readers. Before shifting to Google Reader i used Feedreader, this is also good one but not web based.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Thanks for the heads up Ram!
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:14 pm
You know, we could be twins.
I, too, wrote a comparison on Google Reader recently but did so with Pageflakes.
I’ve subscribed to your feed and will be returning. It’s also time for another Drum Corps post of mine where I highlight blogs, and will include yours!
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:25 am
I checked out this PageFlakes. It reminds me of iGoogle’s homepage. Of course, it was probably around BEFORE iGoogle so yeah. Looks nice too. Do you still use it?
(And BTW, gotta drop a thanks for subscribing, makes me feel all warm inside). (#):)
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:32 am
Well, I haven’t used Pageflakes in a couple of weeks because I wanted to see how Google Reader held up to my needs. So far it’s doing very well, but I think I’ll check out the other ones you review here.
(and you’re welcome for the warm and fuzzies : )
January 5th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I must be the odd one out but Thunderbird blows Google Reader out of the water when it comes to RSS feeds!
March 13th, 2009 at 9:15 am
I feel liferea 1.5.5 (compiled) + Google reader is the best thing that can happen to the world of RSS. liferea allows you to read your feed offline and when you are online it syncs up your list with Google reader so that all the feeds you have read or deleted are synced back to google.
Instructions for installation are here.
http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:ZGkNPckz1XYJ:www.rolfs.no/2008/06/05/building-liferea-153-from-targz/+“You+must+have+either+GtkHTML2,+XulRunner,+Mozilla+or+WebKit”&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=in&client=firefox-a