Bye Bye Bloglines. Hello FeedDemon.
I wouldn’t put it quite like that; yet. Since FeedDemon is free from NewsGator, I thought I’d give it a spin. So for the last week or so I’ve exclusively used FeedDemon for all my RSS needs.
I’ve been a Bloglines user for quite a while. It was my browser’s home page. It’s were I started on the web every time. I like how it works and looks. I didn’t have to install anything - it was just available.
I tried NewsGator’s web based RSS service once or twice; it just never felt right for some reason. So I stuck with Bloglines. I knew of FeedDemon from Nick Bradbury (the author); I use his TopStyle CSS editor for my web development needs - so in following that product I also heard of FeedDemon. At the time it was a purchased program. I just couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to pay for a RSS reader with so many free options on market. Sure it has some offline features and other customizable do-dad’s…but what’s the big deal?
So then came the announcement that FeedDemon was being offered for free. I downloaded and gave it a shot. It allowed me to connect directly to Bloglines (nice), import or access my Bloglines subscriptions (very nice). It has several reading options and layouts, pre-fetching of feed content and pod-casts, alerts of feed updates, and if you want, convert your subscriptions to FeedDemon/NewsGator. If you do convert your subscriptions your feeds will be synced between FeedDemon and the web based interface. Pretty dang cool.
For a while I just used it to connect to Bloglines, but after a while I figured I’d just convert my feeds and go FeedDemon whole-hog. So far so good. I have it installed at work and at home. I love the interface, the features and functionality. I may just leave Bloglines for good. We’ll see. Thanks Nick and NewsGator!