The search for an online feed reader

Long ago when I asked my colleague to suggest a news aggregator just for my academic knowledge, he suggested using WizzRSS. My first impression after using it was - why would anyone like to open an RSS reader in a browser and track?

Then of course, I had necessities for an RSS reader.

I need an RSS reader to manage my limited feed links and read/track them effectively.

Soon, my feed links started growing, and so did my accessibility options. With a computer at home, the limited feed links became “ever-so-growing” feed links, and I got tired exporting feeds as OPML from my home machine, send it as a mail, and then import them in my office to track. And vice versa!!!

You see the problem?

To be always in touch with my feeds from any point of time is nearly impossible with client based RSS feed readers. It means tying my feeds to a single computer.

But client-based readers are powerful and dead fast, and it was difficult to get a web based one which satisfied my requirements.

But, what’s my requirement, anyway?

I need a feed reader that helps tracking my feeds online, so I can access them wherever I go.

A good article on TechCrunch caught my attention, which covered exactly what I wanted! After trying out some of them from this article, and some more, I got a fairly good idea of what is expected out of a web-based RSS reader:

1. Feeds to be track-able online. It’s good to access them using a user-id (or mail-id) wherever I go and whatever machine I use.
2. A good UI which requires lesser learning curve to understand the functionality. Most people know their requirements, but the tool should help them map into functionalities.
3. Sorting the feeds, preferably by date. This helps “tracking” feeds based on a specific period.
4. A bunch of simple, basic, shortcut keys that help handling feeds faster and easier.
5. Rating and sharing posts with friends / network. Not a big requirement, but still popular among users.
6. Miscellaneous – social networking, searching, tagging, and recommendation engines etc. that are more popular with web 2.0 invention, but have little to do with frequent feed readers.

We have a lot of them that gives these functionalities, but some of the key differentiators mentioned below make the web-based feed readers unique:

1. Read/Unread posts – I have as much a necessity to make an item “unread”, as I make them “read”. This is indeed a special feature in client-based web readers. Currently, very few readers provide “unread” functionality. Try NewsAlloy.

2. Preferences management – It’s great to even remember my read and unread posts every time when I log-out and log-in. Sounds pretty obvious to do if you have a Read/Unread isn’t it? But it’s rare to find one with this functionality. Nevertheless, this is an extremely useful key feature noticeable on all client-based RSS readers.

3. UI rich – The learning curve for using any online application should be as shorter as possible. Provide a “desktop” like UI on a web browser with multiple scrolling panes and panels, and you are the best! Also, nowadays with AJAX / JavaScript / Flex tools, it’s so easy :-) GritWire with its client-like UI is developed in Flex, and it’s nice to use.

4. Performance – Performance should not be sacrificed when having such a great look and feel. Loading time must be faster. You wouldn’t like to click on “Import OPML”, and go for a coffee break till it is loaded :-) Google Reader is the fastest I’ve seen in terms of loading content.

5. Documentation – Needless to have a competitive documentation covering all the features, but its helpful if at least proper tool tips are provided for every button, and the headings are bold enough to notice :-)

I have a fairly good list of feed readers to try and feel (Google Reader, BlogLines, GritWire, Rojo, Goowy, Feeds2, Attensa, NewsGator, Pluck, NetVibes...), but I would recommend:

1. NewsAlloy, for it covers 4/5 differentiators I mentioned above. The tool tips are yet to function.
2. GritWire which resembles a thick client and so nice to work with, except for its import OPML, which is currently throwing errors while trying to import any OPML.
3. NetVibes which gives a portal look-and-feel, and is pretty easy for any kind of customization / configuration.

While I am now in a process of converting (and tagging) all my feeds from my favorite client based feed reader (it’s FeedReader) to my online web reader, a true RIA feed reader would be surely the one which would provide the best breed of features from the two camps (client and server), and that’s yet to come :-)