Review: Feedreader, Google Reader, Bloglines, Thunderbird RSS Reader

RSS iconI have tons of blogs and sites that I read on a daily basis. So a few years ago I started using Feedreader, a nice free RSS-reader, but I am not totally satisfied with it. It doesn’t allow any control over how often it updates my feeds, some posts are not displayed right and it has this annoying tendency to stay minimalized.

Since Firefox 2 came out I started using their new option the Firefox Live Bookmark. Instead of static bookmarks you can now subscribe to pages with dynamic content such as blogs. However, I don’t like the display, look, feel and handle of the Live Bookmarks e.g. it just displays the header title.

So it’s time for something new which I have narrowed down to three options:

  1. Google Reader. Even though I love Google’s services I don’t use Gmail because I want to keep my e-mail on my own computer and I love e-mail privacy. Plus I can’t get used to the (conversation-like) interface, which the Google Reader is based on. At a first glance it looks nice, clean, user-friendly (importing my Feedreader bookmarks was easy) and did I mention nice and clean?
  2. Bloglines. Wow, messy! Especially if you just arrived from the Google Reader interface. Adding the icon files to the feed titles surely makes it a more graphical experience, but it looks like a logo overkill. Plus the fact that my own webpage feed doesn’t show up right doesn’t quite make it a first positive experience. Let’s hope that the Firefox 2 plug-in improves my Bloglines experience. Oh hey! There aren’t Firefox 2.0 compatible yet. Well that kind of ends my Bloglines experience right here.
  3. Thunderbird RSS integration.
    Get ThunderbirdI never fully realized my much beloved e-mail program had an integrated RSS reader. I knew it somewhere in the back of my head, but never looked into it. Well now it is time. It looks nice and clean again and I love the way it displays the pages. The only thing that I would like is that it would show a summary of the post instead of only the title. Also adding a new feed takes a few steps in contrast to Feedreader, Google Reader and Bloglines, but it does have the advantage that it is integrated in my e-mail program so no need for external software/webpage.

I will keep you updated with my reading experiences.

3 thoughts on “Review: Feedreader, Google Reader, Bloglines, Thunderbird RSS Reader

  1. Hi Anna,

    Have you had a look at netvibes.com which is a quite nice feed reader and it also connects a lot of other web 2.0 applications.
    I am looking foward to your evaluation of the above mentioned.

  2. Hey Fabian,

    Thanks for the tip! It actually looks pretty good. My digital self is scattered all over the place and this seems like a good page to keep myself together :)

    Anne

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