5 Favorite Feed Readers: 1 – NewsGator Online
June 30, 2007 by Des Walsh
Filed under Social Media
In this short series on my five favorite news readers, I’m listing NewsGator Online first, not because it’s my daily default reader, which it isn’t, but because it is:
- excellent in its layout and usability
- a web service, so there is no download required (good for travel)
- the reader which served me best for quite a long time
- a reader to which I might still come back, after trying others
- free :)
In terms of the layout and usability:
- I can organise my feeds neatly into groups
- I can quickly scan the latest posts for each of the selected feeds
- with just the blog post title and a couple of lines of body text displayed, I can quickly decide which posts I want to read
- clicking on a blog post title takes me to the actual post, within the blog in question
- it’s easy to clear the posts I have read
For potential new users, there is a very good introductory video with step-by-step instructions. Meets my “ease of entry” criterion for recommending products to newcomers.
NewsGator has a range of other products and services. My priority here is to highlight some products which people who are not technical can use to get started with the practicalities of blogging, easily and economically.
In the next post in this short series I look at BlogBridge, which is currently my default feed reader.
While this series is about the feed readers I like and find practical, I know other people have different preferences. Do you have a favorite reader and if so why?
Hey Des,
I was a long time NewsGator Online user till I tried GoogleReader one day after reading all the good reviews. I usually tend to stick to apps but GReader was a breeze to move to – it’s faster than NewsGator IMO.
I also notice that NewsGators has a new Beta version which looks more slick, but has AdWords and is a little slower.
Looking forward to your other reviews.
Thanks Martin
I will of course be including Google Reader. Like you, I was a long time NewsGator user and don’t feel from what I’ve seen that the new Beta adds anything for the user, other than, as you say, a modicum of extra slickness. Hadn’t noticed the relative speed because I haven’t been using it lately.