The fifth and final news reader to be included in this series of 5 favorite readers, FeedDemon, is no newcomer to the scene and has some great features.

Each of the other readers in the series – NewsGator Online, BlogBridge Desktop, Bloglines, Google Reader – is free. For FeedDemon there is a modest charge of $29.95 and there is a fully functional 30 day download option.

I haven’t used FeedDemon for a while but on taking it for a run in the past couple of days I am impressed once more.

I find the layout very clear and easy to follow. A few features I like are:

• easy to search for and find feeds you are looking for
• easy to subscribe and unsubscribe
• easy to switch views from subject headers only, to summaries, to full post view, just by clicking the relevant line in box at the top right of the screen
• easy to mark all posts in a blog or folder as read

I did find it frustrating and annoying that I could not find a way to click through to the actual blog for one post I was interested in, so that I could get the permalink. The facility may be there, but it wasn’t intuitive for me. (Update – later same day: I found at least one way to do it – if I click on the blog name at the top of the feed I get the url in a window top right, then copy and paste that into a browser; my hunch is there is probably something even more direct than that)

FeedDemon has for a long while now been in the NewsGator stable. One benefit of that arrangement is that if you want to have both an online and a desktop reader, your FeedDemon will offer on each startup to synchronize with your NewsGator Online reader (or whenever a feed is updated, or never – you can select the option at any time).

There is also a small, and for me unobtrusive, instant alert popup in the bottom right of your screen whenever one of your feeds is updated. You can turn it off, or time it, as you choose.

I have to admit that when, however long ago, NewsGator bought FeedDemon, I wondered whether it might go the way of other helpful products bought by bigger companies and then quietly allowed to wither and die. From what I’ve seen with this trial run of FeedDemon it is still an excellent product. In fact, I think it may well be better than ever.

Post from: EveryJoe

5 Favorite News Readers: 5 – FeedDemon

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?

Post from: EveryJoe

5 Favorite Feed Readers: 1 – NewsGator Online