With the news yesterday that Google was about to shut the lights off on Google Reader, a lot of people out there were left wondering what their next source for an RSS feed would be. While the initial announcement no doubt stung the faithful Reader users out there it’s not the end of the world and in fact may be a good thing. I was a loyal user of Google’s in house pod catcher Listen going back to the original Motorola Droid, and when they stopped supporting it I found a great alternative called Pocket Casts which is a much better app than Google Listen could ever have dreamed of being.
So now that Google has made you step out of your comfort zone, here are some alternatives for you to try.
NewzCrawler
NewzCrawler is a rss/atom reader, news aggregator, browser and blog client for Windows which provides access to news content from various sources:
Syndicated news given in XML-based formats (Atom, RSS, RDF, BackSlash etc.);
Usenet (NNTP) newsgroups;
Web pages (HTTP).
It gathers news content from each source channel and displays them in a number of views: News List, News Balloon and News Ticker. NewzCrawler’s user interface is similar to an ordinary MS Outlook Express-like user interface. It supports many back-end headline syndication file formats and embeds web browser for extra fast news surfing.
FeedDemon is one of the most popular RSS reader for Windows, with an easy-to-use interface that makes it a snap to stay informed with the latest news and information.
- Use FeedDemon at home, your office, or anywhere you go and keep your feeds, tags and shared items synched between locations.
- Assign your own keywords to items, making it easy to classify and locate articles you’ve previously read.
- Tell FeedDemon to let you know when your keywords appear in any feed you’re subscribed to.
- Get alerted when your keywords appear in any feed, regardless of whether you’re subscribed to it.
- Let FeedDemon automatically download audio files and copy them to your iPod or other media device.
Omea Reader is a free and easy to use RSS reader, NNTP news reader, and web bookmark manager. It’s fast, it aggregates, and it keeps you organized. Check out the additional features: lightning-fast desktop search, flexible information organizer, contextualaccess, and quick extensibility for developers who want more.
- Read RSS feeds, Atom feeds. Also read newsgroups and bookmarked web pages, all in one easy to use information environment.
- It’s easy to organize and categorize your RSS feeds, and you can automate the process with a few clicks.
- Find specific information quickly with Omea Reader’s desktop search functionality.
- Subscribe to feeds, directly from your browser, within seconds. Omea will find the feed for you even if you can’t see an RSS link
- Create custom Views to separate your resources based on their characteristics. Create custom Workspaces to divide your work info from your personal info, or from your projects. See only what you want, with one click.
- Download podcasts directly through Omea, and keep them organized.
- Create Clippings – excerpts from larger documents that you can file, search, and link. Use an array ofFlags to help you set priorities and remember to follow up. Tack your own free-form notes onto any resource withAnnotations.
- Omea Reader runs on the same database as Omea Pro, so you can try Reader now and upgrade to Pro later without losing any of your resources or preferences.
- Developers can extend and customize Omea Reader by writing plugins using the Omea Open API.
Awasu is a state-of-the-art feed reader that comes loaded with features for both casual personal use and professional, high-powered information management. If you’re looking for something to read your favorite blogs and news channels with, Awasu offers both power and flexibility and is far and away one of your best choices. It comes with:
- A modern and fully customizable user interface.
- Individually configurable channels.
- Advanced features to manage your channels.
- Content archiving, coupled with an advanced search engine.
- Automatically download your favorite podcasts.
- Integrate with your blogging tools.
- Automatically keep your blogroll up-to-date.
- Keep working even when you’re not online.
- Actively monitor your feeds for things you’re interested in.
- Bookmark and annotate items.
- Keep multiple copies of Awasu in sync with each other, and even other feed readers.
- Take information out of Awasu and republish it.
Blog Navigator is a program designed to make it easy for users who enjoy reading blogs (short for ‘web logs’) to read and organize them. Blog Navigator works by reading RSS feeds and displaying them in a clean, easy to understand way. It includes a host of different news and blog sites for users to read through.
- Can pre-load an entire blog site to make reading much faster.
- Included Tabbed browser makes it easy to switch between multiple blog sites.
- Blog sites can be exported to a magazine-like format for off-line reading.
- Built in tools for searching the entire blogsphere.
- Different blog sites can be grouped together to create virtual web magazines.
- Interesting articles can be dragged and dropped into a basket for safe keeping.
- Auto-RSS detection.
- Can import OPML and other common files.
SharpReader is a great RSS feed reader that knows how to organize news and blogs in their logical order to make following them easy. Virtual folders and advanced searches would be logical next steps.
- Handles all RSS versions, ATOM 0.3 and 1.0, modules like dublin core, content:encoding, xhtml:body, etc.
- Advanced threading support allowing you to view connected items together in a threaded fashion. SharpReader detects and shows connections between items if they have same link, if one item links to another, if two items both link to the same external webpage, or if an item has comments (for feeds supporting the <wfw:commentrss> standard).
- Group subscribed feeds into custom categories.
- Feed settings like refresh-rate and purge timeout can be set per feed or per category. Category-wide settings apply to all feeds in that category that are still set to “Default” for the setting in question.
- Dialog-less way of subscribing to new feeds – just drag a link from your browser into SharpReader, or enter the url into the address-bar at the top.
- Feedster integration to easily search weblogs and news sites for specific terms, and even subscribe to such a search to be notified of new results.
- Support for proxy-servers and proxy authentication.
- Reduces bandwidth by using HTTP Conditional GETs and gzip/deflate encoding.
- Minimizes to the system-tray.
- Systray popup when new items arrive (can be disabled on a per-feed or per-category basis through the properties pane).
- Easy keyboard navigation to go the next or previous unread item.
- Import and export your subscriptions using OPML.
- Filter items.
- International Character-set support.
- HTTP Authentication support.
Feedly is a news aggregator or RSS feed reader application for various Web browsers and mobile devices running iOS and Android. It compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources for the user to customize and share with others. Feedly combines the visual appeal of a magazine with the efficiency and convenience of an RSS reader. The result is a powerful tool which allows you to organize, read and share the information which helps you stay current and creative in your life.
- The feedly UI is custom tailored for a 4″ phone, a 7″ tablet and a 10″ tablet. If you run feedly on a tablet, you will get an experience which is very close to a personalized magazine.
- When you run feedly on a phone and on a tablet, the configuration will automatically syncs between both devices.
- Feedly makes sharing content on twitter, facebook and google+ very simple, either directly or using Buffer.
See any that you may not have known of or would like to give a shot? Did I miss your favorite? let us know in the comments.