Best RSS Reader for Netbooks

As we all know, Netbooks lack the screen real estate that larger PC’s have. Sure you can plugin an external monitor to help out, but when you are mobile you don’t have that luxury.

I’ve sampled a lot of RSS Readers in my time, most fit for the basics of RSS subscription and aggregation but only a few really stand out of the crowd. Add in the needs of the mobile blogger / tech writer and you have an even harder task on hand, if you are a blogger constantly on the go then having a robust RSS Reader is essential.

So lets delve into the world of RSS Readers for Netbooks.

Google Reader

This is an excellent RSS reader for on the go for most laptop and cross-platform but is good for netbooks? Lets take a look.

On the plus side Google Reader does indeed fit the bill for portability, not requiring installation other than a current version browser and the much needed internet connection.

You can also use this offline with an installation of Google Gears and of course if you use Google Chrome then you can install the Google Reader Notifier Extension to know when new items are available.

Reading articles on the small screen with Google Reader is pretty good, especially if your browser has an excellent full screen mode.

To be accurate, Google Reader is a web app pretending to be a traditional desktop reader, it contains features that usually only desktop readers would have.

On the netbook it is as nimble as your current internet connection is, so waiting for content to load isn’t a problem, there are some UI elements which could be smaller such as the subscriptions sidebar width, it would also be nice to be able to minimize or remove the items listed in the sidebar that you don’t always need.

Pros: Google reader is fast, clean and built for usability.

Cons: A few UI flaws that need to be updated.

RSS Owl

RSS Owl has been around for a long time, longer even than Google’s offerings in fact.

First released in 2004, it has a lifetime of development to make it a strong RSS reader. Where it differs from Google Reader is this is a desktop solution, software that has been written exclusively in Java.

Although being a desktop application it is available for Windows, Mac OS X and a variety of Linux flavors.

RSS Owl is a great desktop reader, its interface is clean and uncluttered, plenty of options for the avid RSS reader and being written in Java its nice and snappy when downloading new feed content.

However on a netbook the only useful feed viewer setting is the newspaper view. Best of all though is that it comes in a portable flavor, meaning you can throw it on a USB drive and off you go.

Syncing is amazing with RSS Owl, the developers really have made it easy to sync from a wide range of sources, Google Reader, OPML and a plethora of others.

The wide and vertical views are not good on the small screen as you cannot read the post titles.

The one great saving viewing feature however is the tabbed views your open feeds is a great way to switch between each feed.

Pros: Quick, clean and useful and syncs to a wide range of sources including Google Reader. Portable version available.

Cons: Limited options for small screen space.

FeedDemon

FeedDemon is an enormously popular RSS reader, its also a reader that has been with us for a long time.

Originally being developed for Newsgator as paid software with online subscription features from Newsgator.com, fast forward a few years and it became freeware with feed syncing  to Google Reader.

FeedDemon looks great on the small screen, lots of space for your feeds to occupy, minimizing subscription pane, tiny header pane makes this all a joy to use.

FeedDemon has an amazing array of features that will keep even the most addicted RSS junkie happy.

On the downside, feed syncing is fairly slow, even with just a few feeds on a fast connection, so a large number of feeds would slow the process down considerably.

Another downside is that without hacks you can’t use the official build of FeedDemon as a portable app (mind you I’m sure the more industrious of you would find a portable version somewhere).

Finally and understandably it is ad supported. Going from paid software to freeware is a hard task, the ads are unobtrusive but still niggle at the senses while reading your favorite feed.

Pros: Probably the best reading experience from a downloadable client

Cons: Slow feed syncing, no portable version, it is ad supported.

FeedReader

FeedReader may appear to be one of the weaker of the RSS readers available for desktop use.

Its basic, really basic, but that might not be too bad.

FeedReader is really a bare bones reader, it has simple and functional features without providing a full on RSS reading experience like something like FeedDemon provides. No options to gather data from external online readers like Google Reader, it does have an import feature for OPML files so you can at least export your feeds from another source or sync from FTP / OPML hosted remotely.

The biggest drawback is that you need to add each feed manually to the reader, FeedReader does have auto-discovery which works for the most part but fails sometimes with websites that offer multiple feeds.

It comes in both installable and portable flavors to keep both worlds happy.

Pros: Terribly lightweight, great reading pane size.

Cons: Manual feed input, no syncing to online readers.

The Verdict

Really its up to you in the end, these 4 options are by no means the only on offer, feed tickers and other methods to get your RSS fix are available in droves.

If you have another reader you love to use on your netbook or have other alternatives for RSS reading, hit the comments to let me know!

Jumpcut is closing down…

Well it is now official, Jumpcut is closing its doors on the 15th of June 2009, as they have indicated this was with a heavy heart that they are shutting down but it is all due the to prioritization of Yahoo!

The question remains whether this has been caused by the financial downturn the world is in at the moment or if it is because of the proliferation of other services that have dominated the market place of online video.

As you can see from the email above that the powers that be will be releasing a software utility that allows for video downloads from your account, which in my mind is a damn fine thing to do for its users.

Jumpcut has been a staple for many in the online video sharing market over the past years and had provided many innovations to the online video market, it surely will be missed by huge number of people.

I just hope that the other video sharing sites can innovate technology similar to Jumpcut and be just as great a service.

Tweetie for Mac Unleashed

There comes a time in every web services life where if it is popular enough it will jump from web app to other platforms, and as we all know there are hundreds if not thousands of applications that you can download for numerous devices for Twitter

But it is usually a long road until something truly unique and amazing comes out that blows the competition away.

Tweetie is the app that does this for me…

Now a lot of people love Tweetdeck , and hey I’m one of them, it is an awesome app, and while using my windows machine I will use Tweetdeck over every single other application, but only because Tweetie is a Mac exclusive application.

Tweetie isn’t an Adobe Air app so its platform dependent, its only for Mac users, much like Adium, but this doesn’t stop it from being the best Twitter app I’ve ever used.

What makes Tweetie such a good app starts at its design, its minimalist, so for a Mac user it feels right at home with other applications, its fluid in approach with nice OS effects for screen changes and updates, its simple to use unlike other apps that bombard you with options in hard to reach or with bizarre icons (Twhirl I’m looking in your direction), and most of all the Tweetie developers have thought about the way you use Twitter with other apps, no I’m not talking about other web services (although they have done this too) I’m talking about simple things like an embeddable bookmarklet to post current sites straight from a browser amongst other things.

Tweetie for Mac is the big brother of the iPhone version, although this has been available from the iTunes app store for quite some time now, the new addition of its fully fledged Mac brethren is an amazing application in its own right, I sure hope that atebits decide to include some iPhone client to Mac client interaction to make these two applications shine even more.

Atebits (the developer) are currently offering Tweetie for Mac at $14.95 for a limited time only which will increase to $19.95 after May 4th 2009, which is a little steep for some people considering that they are probably using a free Adobe Air Twitter client, that does everything they need, but you can download the app and run it for free forever (albeit ad supported).

This fact may detract from the adoption of the application by some users, even though we have had paid Twitter clients before (see Twitterrific) it may take an over all hit in initial users because of ads and or cost of registration.

But I’ve bought it, in fact I was using the app for less than half an hour before I purchased Tweetie, and the reason is that this app makes me once again excited about Twitter and fundamentally changes the way that I use Twitter on my Mac.

Another of its great features is the detached posting window, most people won’t like this as we are traditionally used to the posting area to be a part of the main application but this adds powerful features to Tweetie as you don’t need to have the entire screen taken up by a client when writing a tweet.

The posting window can be activated at any time by a pre-determined key shortcut you can set in the preferences, meaning you can post at anytime, without having the main client window taking up screen real estate.

This means that you can make Tweetie as prominent as you wish, great for those who leave a Twitter client open and get distracted by an update coming through, you can just tweet when you feel the need to, rather than when compelled to by another persons updates.

See the blue glowing icon in the finder bar? Thats all the external communication you get if you have the application minimized which, as I have said before, is great for those times when you don’t want to be disturbed, but want to have the ability to keep an eye on updates. If there are no updates the icon stays grey like the other icons pictured above.

The coolest feature though? Multiple account switching.

Switching between accounts is seamless, just a quick click of the account icon image and Tweetie slides up the next account in the list including all relevant posts and updates from the account, allowing you to add many Twitter accounts and to post and cross post information between them with amazing speed.

Even the posting window as you can see above has a drop down list for selecting an account on the fly!

This app alone has made me totally rethink the way I post to Twitter, alone it stands proud and in conjunction with its iPhone version it makes sure that you always have an excellent client to use Twitter no matter where you find yourself.

If you are serious about Twitter, have a Mac and want to have the best experience in my opinion for updating Twitter using an app thats built for simplicity but has extreme features then give Tweetie ago!