Feed me!

For some time now I’ve been struggling to keep up with all of the feeds that interest me. It wouldn’t be a big deal, but that also includes a lot of friends who write on Livejournal – and I’d like to keep up with them. For awhile I’ve used SharpReader, but working on three different computers makes it difficult to sync what I’ve read over the course of the day. So I started to look for alternatives, including some web-based readers. Since it’s initial announcement, feedlounge has peaked my interest as a very likely candidate.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get into the alpha or beta testing, so I continued to use SharpReader with varying degrees of success. Now that feedlounge has gone live, however, the price is keeping me away. I’m not about to diss the service or say that it’s overpriced, but it is more than I want to spend right now – I was hoping it would be in the $25-$30 range. I got an e-mail yesterday saying that I could get a free month since I waited so patiently on the mailing list, so I might give it a try anyway.

In the meantime, though, I’ve begun using FeedDemon (actually the first feed reader I ever used) along with the NewsGator Online service. The synchronization features are still in beta, but the intent is to let you have multiple installs of FeedDemon as well as the web version that will all keep up to date with each other. You can even identify locations so that only the appropriate feeds show up on certain computers.

The interface is different from what I’ve come to expect, but I’m getting more accustomed to the “Surfer”-style interface which places all posts on a continuous display. It’s kind of like a neverending friends page – only far easier to navigate. Plus, I’ve even got it working with “Friends-Only” LJ pages! (More on that later)

Even with all of those features, it’s priced at the $30/year point that I was hoping for. I’ll be giving feedlounge a try, too, but with money getting tighter around here I can’t alway pay the price for the “premium” services anymore.