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NetNewsWire - Free RSS News Feed Reader
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NetNewsWire 3.1 - Free RSS News Feed Reader

From Heinz Tschabitscher,
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Guide Rating - rating

The Bottom Line

NetNewsWire is competent and flexible RSS feed reader that combines Mac elegance with smart tools that help you follow news updates efficiently. Fast Spotlight search and smart folders make getting to the important updates a snap and reading news in NetNewsWire is a pleasure indeed.
Pros
  • NetNewsWire can auto-collect news items in smart folders and offers fast Spotlight search
  • You can synchronize multiple NetNewsWire installations and log into a Bloglines account
  • NetNewsWire can announce via Growl, is scriptable and includes Automator actions
Cons
  • NetNewsWire does not thread items or put news in context
  • NetNewsWire does not include customizable color labels

Description

  • NetNewsWire is a RSS and Atom feed reader with support for podcasts.
  • Feeds can be organized in folders, and NetNewsWire lets you search across feeds easily with Spotlight.
  • Smart lists automatically collect news items matching certain criteria from your subscriptions.
  • NetNewsWire makes it easy to subscribe to searches and tags, and can display any script output.
  • You can flag items or save clippings for later in NetNewsWire and specify per feed how long items should be kept.
  • Feeds and folders can be sorted by the attention you give to their items (opening, flagging, etc.).
  • The NetNewsWire Dock icon displays the number of new items and lets you browse headlines directly.
  • NetNewsWire can be controlled from AppleScript and provides Automator actions for easy automation.
  • Multiple NetNewsWire installations can be synchronized via .Mac, FTP or NewsGator Online.
  • NetNewsWire supports Mac OS X 10.3/4/5.

Guide Review - NetNewsWire 3.1 - Free RSS News Feed Reader

NetNewsWire is a versatile news tool. Not only does it make reading news pretty, easy and comfortable, NetNewsWire also lets you use what you have just read.

First, NetNewsWire helps you find the interesting stuff, not only with fast as-you-type search (integration with Spotlight would be nice) but also with smart folders that automatically aggregate matching news items.

NetNewsWire lets you subscribe to (blog) search engine results easily, but it cannot incorporate these results with other feeds or relate news items to each other.

In general, NetNewsWire is not picky about what to display: you can also subscribe to local files, tags (Flickr and friends), and just about anything else using scripts. Naturally, NetNewsWire can download RSS enclosures and podcasts.

It's easy to flag items in NetNewsWire and save them for later as clippings, but custom (color) labels that could be used in smart folders might be even better. It's nice how you can make NetNewsWire draw attention to feeds and folders you use (flagging or mailing items, following links, posting to del.icio.us) most often.

Integration with blog editors makes reacting to posts a snap. Integration with other readers from the NewsGator family works perfectly and you can easily track your Bloglines feeds, too.
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