Preparing to do a session on Feed readers I’ve spent time this week investigating feed readers. Here are just a few of the things I found:
- Most browsers now either have built into them or all as extensions feed readers. I particularly like Opera 9’s and Firefox with Sage extension.
- For IE6 the addition of the Windows live toolbar and the Onfolio add-in make it a better feed reader than that in IE7.
- Bloglines has nice related links function which allows you to go from one feed to a list of similiar feeds, select several and subscribe to them all in one go.
- Google Reader – very straight forward web reader, but boy! was it slow loading the Manage Feeds page on my broadband link (up to 8MB, but running at 6.1 tonight). Never had patience to wait for enough of page to load to take a screenshot for my powerpoint. Turns out this is a problem with IE6 as had exactly the same problem at work, ended up changing browser to Firefox to investigate the options in Manage Feeds, pays to have access to multiple browsers.
- For desktop reader I really like RSS Bandit over SharpReader – this has annoying pop-ups when new stuff comes in. Will look at Feed Reader and Omea both of which have been recommended to me tomorrow.
I also put together list of directories of feed readers:
- RSS Compendium: RSS Readers
- RSS Specifications: RSS Software
- WebUser: Feed readers Review
- About.com: Find the Best RSS Feed Readers / News Aggregators
- HEBIG.org: RSS Feed Reader / News Aggregators Directory
- Aggcompare.com: Directory of RSS Aggregators– table of comparative features
Hi Patti,
Interesting review of some of the main feed readers. I have to confess to being very disappointed by IE7’s attempt at managing RSS feeds, but perhaps MicroSoft expect everyone to upgrade Outlook to 2007, which is much better at it.
Have you had a chance to test out Feed Reader and Omea yet?
BTW, I have blogrolled you on the UKeiG Web 2.0 blog.
Karen Blakeman
[...] Feed Reader tip-bits Patti Biggs (Pattibuk) has commented on her experiences with some web based and desktop feed readers in her Library Bunny’s Blog. So far she has looked at Opera 9 (has built in feed reading [...]
[...] of desktop readers Following on from her Feed Reader tip-bits, Patti Biggs has reviewed three desktop readers. Feedreader, RSS Bandit and Omea went under the [...]