Decaflon

I've always used Bloglines because it gives me everything I need and works pretty well. I have tried Google Reader, but for some reason it just doesn't work right for me.

For the past few days though, I've been trying out FeedDemon as my main feed reader and synchronizing it Bloglines has made it all the more enjoyable. But I don't see the point of having something installed when my Bloglines is tied straight into my Firefox.

I just haven't seen a good replacement for Bloglines. What I want to know is, aside from podcasts what do other feed readers offer than Bloglines can't give?

I don't read that many sites on my feeds, only about 30+. I don't think I'm going to need all the extra features like AJAX interface and all that. I mean, what can AJAX do to make my feed reading any better than just automatically ticking off what I've already read?

I use Google Reader but I have one serious problem with it - I cannot pull new feeds when I want to. It seems to go on Google's cycle and I cannot control it. There are times when I know there are new articles on a site, I hit "refresh" and I cannot get them. I also do not like it displays the time Google pulled the feed not when the article was written.

I need to check out Bloglines again. I never had much of an issue with it, I preferred a desktop application at the time, FeedDemon.

Speaking of FeedDemon, I might end up going back to that since I can use Newsgator as the online counterpart for that. I like that I can set feeds to update, clean/weed out old entries, archive, mark thinks read based on time if I didn't read them (like email), and view popular topics in my subscriptions. For things I have planned being able to click/watch for things in a large amount of feeds will come in handy.

Haha, as I typed this I think I'm leaning towards the more robust FeedDemon/Newsgator solution. Funny how I worked that out in my mind while typing LOL. Thanks! :)

I just haven't seen a good replacement for Bloglines. What I want to know is, aside from podcasts what do other feed readers offer than Bloglines can't give?

For me, feed management. Honestly, there are some sites that mean more to me than others so I want to receive updates from them more often than others. There are sites that FeedDemon (or whatever) will mark as having new items, I see the new item notification and ignore it. So my feedreader isn't cluttered I can set those to update once a week (or once a month) instead of hourly so I don't see the notifications. Funny but not seeing the notifications until I want to mentally stops me from feeling like I "need" to read those feeds. Like I have something I should be doing that I'm ignoring, if that makes sense lol.

I'm on several machines and OSs so I use GReader exclusively.

Tried Vienna once, looks great, but yeah, no sync with work so that sux.

As for not being able to auto-update, I've no problem with that: counter's eternally stuck at 1000+ unread items so I always have something to read.

I use Google Reader but I have one serious problem with it - I cannot pull new feeds when I want to. It seems to go on Google's cycle and I cannot control it. There are times when I know there are new articles on a site, I hit "refresh" and I cannot get them. I also do not like it displays the time Google pulled the feed not when the article was written.

That is the biggest drawback I have with Google Reader. The news always seems to be a lot later than any other web-based feed reader. Polling frequency is definitely behind any desktop feed reader, since frequency is generally very configurable.

The "refresh" button in Google Reader will not force a poll, pulling in new items. Unfortunately, all that particular function does is refresh the reading pane.

I use FeedDemon. I have used BlogLines and Google Reader for large amounts of time in the past, but I find FeedDemon much faster and versatile for me.

The Synchronisation feature through Newsgator means you don't read the same thing in multiple locations. My podcasts are handled like all of the other feeds (and downloaded automatically on my schedule to use off-peak broadband).

I just find it quick to go through feeds, put various entries in different 'bins' depending on what I want to do with them later. Easy controls for blogging from them, posting to del.icio.us or whatever.

I also love the report views it has, being able to see the most popular items out of your feeds that everyone else who uses those feeds has been looking at is almost like having TechMeme just for your own feeds.

Basically though, use whatever you're happy with - I've pretty much had a go on all of the online ones trying to find the perfect one and never finding it. FeedDemon does it for me though - and it's free now which is a bonus :)

I went through a period a couple of years ago trying every feedreader out there and I settled on Vienna. It did what I needed it to do and it just fitted into my life. At the time, NetNewsWire had a crippled free version which limited the number of feeds you could read. I tried it but didn't love it enough to pay for the full version. Now it's free, I might have a trial of it against Vienna, but I have a suspicion that I'm going to stay with my first love. The lack of synching doesn't bother me and from what I can tell, NNW has nothing else to make me prefer it.

I tried Google Reader and lasted all of ten minutes before I gave up in frustration. I can't see why so many people love it.

I use Google Reader, which I've been using for a long while now. I started out with Bloglines, which I also soon discovered didn't suit my tastes. I hated that clicking on a feed marked every item as read. I moved on to other stuff, settling on FeedDemon for a short while. I found that I wasn't crazy about the desktop feed reader thing, so I went back online with Feedlounge. I loved Feedlounge - until things started just not working at all. It went downhill from there. In the midst of using Feedlounge, Google Reader had been released with a difference interface, quite a bit different than its initial launch, and so I gave it another whirl. It did what I wanted, was free, and worked.

So there I am.

I have to second most of what Kamigoroshi said:

I've always used Bloglines because it gives me everything I need and works pretty well. I have tried Google Reader, but for some reason it just doesn't work right for me.

For the past few days though, I've been trying out FeedDemon[...] But I don't see the point of having something installed when my Bloglines is tied straight into my Firefox.

My reason for not using FeedDemon after trying it was partly this, and partly that it looked like an ugly Outlook clone. If/When I get a Mac I'm going to have to play with NetNewsWire, but until then I'm guessing it'll just be Bloglines.

Netvibes, anyone? I prefer having my feeds aggregated through a web-based client.

I especially like being able to listen to podcasts whilst reading other entries from a completely different site, all from within the the same window.

I could never get used to feedreaders. I'm a web browser kinda guy with loads of tabs open in Firefox at once. 9Rules tends to point me in the direction of stuff I find interesting.

I use the Google Reader and never looked back since. And with the Better GReader extension, I can even post comments from within the Reader. Isn't that cool and time saving?

I used to use Google Reader, but then it started messing around and didn't update or organise posts correctly.

So now I use FeedDemon, but mainly I just visit the website. It's nice to see the designs etc..

For a while I would just view feeds in Safari but it got to the point at which I was subscribed to so many feeds it just became cumbersome. Then I used Vienna, which worked, but was a tad buggy and froze more often than I prefer. I didn't stress over it, but in a recent note about free programs for the Mac someone said mentioned NetNewsWire being better, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I started a Newsgator account so I could access feeds from my work (at newsgator.com) and home (in NNW) computers without having to skim over already-viewed content. It's a great solution for me and I find keeping up to be less of a hassle. The NNW app looks good (I like the choice of themes and views) and works well, and its web browser is head and shoulders above Vienna's. Also you can post links from it directly to your delicious and twitterrific, which is nice.

I used Google Reader at first but then I came back to a desktop reader, NetNewsWire.

The only thing I regret is that it doesn't download the pics to see them offline whereas it does upload the multimedia content. Doesn't make sense to me...

I use Google Reader, but it's the only one I've tried so far.... I'm quite happy with it

I use Google Reader when I actually do decide to check feeds. I can't say I do it for any technology reasons besides it's nice to have a single login across all my Google apps.

I was using NetVibes earlier, but switched to Google Reader because I just love it! Never tried Bloglines, though...

I use NetNewsWire, because I like the amount of features and flexibility that it has compared to Google Reader, the feed reader that I use using prior to NNW. It's one of my most used applications on my Macbook, it's worth the once $30 price tag.

Compared to Google Reader, it's really fast because the articles that are downloaded are stored locally for you to read, rather than using AJAX to get the job done. NNW also uses the Webkit engine, the same engine that powers the Safari web browser. This means that you're always getting the best, mostly standard compliant browsing experience which makes me a happy camper and makes Internet Explorer continue to cry in the corner.

It's integration into other applications, such as del.icio.us, ecto, and MarsEdit makes it even more of a pleasure to use. NNW doesn't need Greasemonkey hacks and scripts to make things work and look well like you need for Google Reader. Also, the design for the icons and interface have really been thought out. I can give Google Reader the benefit of having way better keyboard shortcuts and social integration, but that's about it.

Newsfire, free, and coming from Yorkshire anything free is good with me! :D