As I promised a couple of weeks ago, here's my review of several news aggregators. I have reviewed the following four products: FeedDemon, NewsGator, SharpReader and RssBandit.
FeedDemon - $29.95 (Josh's Pick)
FeedDemon is a product of Bradbury Software, which is run by Nick Bradbury who also created HomeSite and TopStyle. FeedDemon is a rich-client application with many features, including a tabbed browser, integration with Feedster, News bins for storing favorite news items, and the ability to watch feeds for specific keywords so that you can quickly read all retrieved feeds containing those keywords.
Installing FeedDemon is a breeze. The file is about 2 MB in size and downloads quickly. The installation process is simple and intuitive. FeedDemon includes many popular news feeds by default, so even users brand new to syndication can get started. I had a list of blogs that I exported from SharpReader into an OPML file that imported into FeedDemon with no problem. Upon installing, you're presented with three main window panes, one for the list of "channels" or blog categories, one for the list of recent posts, and one for the browser. The windows are collapsible, and you can also choose to display the browser on either the right side or the bottom of the screen.
Reading syndicated content in FeedDemon is easy and convenient. One of my favorite features is the tabbed browsing. Nick has implemented tabbed browsing using Internet Explorer, which makes it easy to access my Favorites list from within the reader. Additionally, you can use FireFox as the default browser, but this is an unsupported feature. The UI is expertly designed with the user being able to hide all windows but the browser window. I often find myself forgetting that I'm using FeedDemon to browse the Web!
Adding a new channel, or blog, to a channel group is easy. Typically, all you have to do is click the syndication button (the orange XML button) and the New Channel Wizard starts. The newsfeed is verified, then added to whichever Channel Group you specify.
One of the reasons that I wanted to upgrade from SharpReader is the ability to save favorite news items for later viewing. FeedDemon makes this easy to do. You can simply right-click the news item you want to save and click Copy to News Bin. I've yet to use the Watch list feature, but I'm sure that I'll be using it quite a bit in the future. Additionally, you can synchronize the feeds between multiple computers through the cache feature. Some users recommend using a USB thumb drive to move the cache between computers. It's time consuming to wade through the same feeds on multiple computers, so I'm excited about this feature. I haven't used it, yet, but other users have had good luck with it.
Furthermore, FeedDemon runs fast, just as described. In other aggregators, it sometimes took a while for the application to load, but FeedDemon loads almost instantaneously. Then, accessing the application from the System Tray is quick and easy.
Finally, one of the best features of FeedDemon is the support. Nick provides support forums for his product on the Bradbury Software Web site. As a one-man software shop, Nick himself personally answers many support questions, usually very quickly, and provides many useful tips for using his products. Frankly, I'm amazed at his ability to provide the level of support that he does while producing such high quality products! Additionally, several power users provide tips through the support forums and the FeedDemon Tips blog.
Conclusion - FeedDemon is an excellent RSS/Atom News Aggregator. It is a sleek, elegant product that is both easy to use and powerful. I highly recommend this product.
NewsGator - $29.00
NewsGator is a product of NewsGator Technologies, which is run by Greg Reinacker. Unlike the other aggregators in my review, which provide a rich-client experience, NewsGator is integrated with Microsoft Outlook. This is what makes NewsGator so compelling. I use Outlook daily for e-mail access and thought that being able to read the news from within Outlook is a great idea. Another thing that impressed me is that NewsGator is written using .NET.
Installing NewsGator was fast and simple. Additionally, it was easy to import my OPML file into NewsGator. One thing that I liked was that, after installation, a Subscribe in NewsGator button was added to Internet Explorer making it extremely simple to add new feeds to NewsGator. Since it's integrated with Outlook, feeds are organized in a single folder by default; however, you can modify this configuration if you prefer. I found using NewsGator to be very easy. Adding feeds was simple, as was reading new feeds.
NewsGator Technologies has recently added some new services to their product list. NewsGator Online Services enables you to synchronize your feeds among multiple computers, as well as provides exclusive content to subscribers (NewsGator Online Services is available for a monthly subscription). This week, NewsGator Technologies closed a round of venture funding, so I'm sure new services and features are planned! It'll be interesting to see how this product expands over the next few months.
Conclusion - NewsGator's integration with Outlook is seamless, and NewsGator is very easy to use. Ultimately, I wanted the rich-client experience of a separate Windows application, so the integration with Outlook wasn't for me.
SharpReader - FREE
I've been using SharpReader for over 6 months. SharpReader is a free news aggregator built using .NET by Luke Hutteman. SharpReader is a no frills aggregator that does what it's supposed to do (retrieve and display news feeds) very well. Like FeedDemon and RssBandit, SharpReader provides three panes, one for the list of blogs on the left, one for the list of recent posts, and one for the posted information. The UI is basic, but intuitive and easy to use. Adding feeds is fairly simple; you type or paste the URL into the Address box and click Subscribe.
There are a few downsides to SharpReader. It has a lack of advanced features that I want, such as searching and watching feeds. Additionally, it uses a ton of memory and is fairly slow. For example, I was running SharpReader, FeedDemon and RssBandit at the same time and FeedDemon and RssBandit consumed about 4 to 7 MB of memory at any given time. SharpReader, in contrast, consumed about 50 MB of memory at any given time with the same feeds!
Conclusion - Although SharpReader lacks some advanced features and is a memory hog, it provides an easy to use interface and does the job its intended to do (retrieve and display feeds) very well. I would highly recommend SharpReader to anyone looking for a free news aggregator.
RssBandit - FREE
RssBandit is one of the first news aggregators that I discovered about a year ago. I read about it in an MSDN article and promptly tried it out. It has come a long way in the last year and provides many of the features of the commercial aggregators, such as a search folder and tabbed browsing using an embedded browser. RssBandit is an open source application started by Dare Obasanjo. It's built using .NET, so the .NET Framework is required.
RssBandit has more features than SharpReader, but it's interface is not quite as clean. At this point, it appears as though features have been added, but the interface has not been fully designed. It is an impressive application, and Dare has recently said that he hopes to compete with the commercial aggregators, so I wouldn't count RssBandit out yet.
Conclusion - RssBandit is a solid application, but needs more polish before really being able to compete with the commercial aggregators. However, if you need some of the features of the commercial aggregators, but don't want to pay for them, then RssBandit is worth a try.