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Raghu's NetLog

This is my personal weblog. There is no particular topic that I'm going to stick with. You can find articles about music, movies, technology, cricket, may be even little bit about politics. Please post your comments - good or bad. This will only encourage me in either way and improve my weblog.

Saturday, October 02, 2004

RSS Readers I Like

I'm into RSS News Feeds since about 6 months. Believe me, it did really change the way I use web and access my news sources. I visit approximately 25 different news sources everyday. Going to each and every website and look for news is waste of time for anybody. But, I used to do it. Until, this RSS phenomenon caught up on me. I tried different RSS readers.
When I started, I wanted a standalone news aggregator. I didn't want a web-based one. After doing some research, I found Wildgrape NewsDesk to be my best choice. One disadvantage with standalone aggregators is that there will be no pop-up blockers. So, if a website has pop ups, you just can't stop them from appearing. But, good thing about NewsDesk is that you just minimize it to the taskbar and open feeds from there in a separate browser. I liked this feature a lot and have been using this since then.
The biggest disadvantage with NewsDesk is that it is only IE compatible. I switched to FireFox sometime back. But, NewsDesk opens feeds only in IE. Well, I had no choice but live with that for some time. I used IE only for 3 things - my NewsDesk feeds, any links from MSN Messener and my local language websites that FireFox didn't support.
But, after FireFox released 1.0 PR, I wanted to try Sage extension for Firefox. Sage is also an RSS aggregator, but it is web-based. I really somehow don't like web-based aggregators. But, seeing no other choice, I tried it and instantly got hooked up. I rarely used NewsDesk couple of times after that. I used Sage for some time and it became my latest favorite.
But, then I came across Bloglines. Now, I changed my loyalties to Bloglines. This is even better than Sage. The bestpart is Bloglines supports Firefox. Yeah, it is web-based too. I think I undermined web-based readers before. The biggest advantage for we-based readers is that I can access my feeds anywhere internet is available, not just from my laptop. This is cool.
Well, I have been loyal to Bloglines atleast for now. Don't know how long I'm gonna stick with this. I wouldn't have tried this in the first place had it not been compatible with Firefox. Even Bloglines have got great extension for Firefox so that whenever there are new feeds, it lets me know.
Click here for my Bloglines Page to check my Feeds.