Collect all your favourite news and blog content in one place without having to visit the sites.
Most web users will have a bunch of sites they visit as soon as their computer gets switched on – sites such as BBC News, Web User and the blogs of friends and family. Although an essential start to the day, there's no guarantee there's going to be anything you want to look at, so going to each site individually can be time consuming, especially if you're a news junkie.
However, with some websites, a web browser isn't the only way you can read their content – many also publish 'feeds', which are basic text versions of the site that can be read in a simple feed reader program. If you have one of these readers, you can download the new content of all your favourite sites in one go, scan through headlines and summaries and generally avoid having to visit the site unless there's an article you want to read in more detail.
What's even better is that many of these are free.
Google has made lots of changes to its feed reader since it first launched and has slowly but steadily gained ground on Bloglines, to the extent that it is now marginally superior.
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If you're not too bothered about a flashy drag-and-drop interface and would rather your feeds were displayed quickly and efficiently, then FeedShow is definitely worth considering.
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Google Reader shares similarities with Google Mail, but NewsAlloy – which isn't related to Google in any way – is virtually a clone of the webmail service.
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Letting you manage web bookmarks, browse newsgroups and search your Desktop, Omea Reader is more an all-in-one organisation tool than a mere feed reader.
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A basic but perfectly serviceable program, RssReader does exactly what it claims. It lets you gather and read feeds in both RSS and Atom format, adding addresses from its built-in directory.
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Sauce Reader's blue-ish interface has been designed to look like a Microsoft Office tool, but, in contrast to Microsoft's commercial strategy, home users can download it free.
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This plug-in for Internet Explorer isn't simple to use, but if you can master its complex side-bar console, it has a great selection of features.
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As one of the first free readers we could find to support the Atom feeds that Blogger uses, Bottom Feeder has been at the cutting edge of the technology battle.
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Feed readers round up
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Claire Woffenden, Editor
