If you use RSS, Google Reader is among the best there is. So good, in fact, that I imported all my old Bloglines feeds. The interface, the starring of important feed items, the sharing — all of it is addictive.
Recently, I started using the Vienna client on OSX, which looks good but it’s a pain to manage the feed listings in two places– Google Reader, and local Vienna. Yes, you can import your Google Reader OPML into Vienna, but to have them synced, you need to import it often.
But that’s a manual sync and not very useful.
If Vienna’s user forums are any indication, the automatic synchronization between Google Reader and Vienna is among the top requested features, and I can understand why.
Well, I won’t be waiting for Vienna anymore, as the Adobe AIR Google Reader client is here, and it works like a charm!
The interface is very Mac OSX like, very clean and nifty. Just set up your Google email and password:
And you are ready to roll. Of course, it doesn’t (yet) have the functionality to tweak font sizes or flag important items or share — i.e., a complete desktop alternative to Vienna or Google Reader, but this is a fantastic start.
One Comment
Another alternative is running Google Reader inside of Fluid. Userscripts can be applied to tweak it! All of the functionality of Google reader in firefox but in a standalone SSB.