NewsFire 1.6 (v84) is a FREE newsreader application by David Watanabe. It is an easy to use, simple, minimalistic newsreader for Mac OS X Leopard. To download NewsFire, go to http://www.newsfirerss.com/. The site gives a snippet of information about NewsFire along with the download button, but no support or FAQs are offered.

When you first open NewsFire, your feeds are on the left panel and a blank screen on the right. Just click on one of your feeds in the list on the left and the right will display the items in the feed. Mouse to a feed item you want to read and the list disappears and shows the item only. You can use your left and right arrow keys to navigate to the previous or next feed or use your mouse to click the arrows in the top right hand corner. Clicking on the feed heading will open the actual article in your default browser. You can also hit the Next button. I’m not sure what the purpose is of having the Next button along side the arrows.

Adding a feed is simple. Click on the ‘+’ sign in the bottome left hand corner and a popup window will give you the option to enter the URL address, a name for the feed, and if you want to add it to a group. Click ‘Add’ and its in your list.
If you have an OPML file of feeds, you can import them into NewsFire by clicking File<Import and the Finder window opens for you to find the file.
NOTE: To create an OPML file of your Google Reader feeds, just click on Manage Subscriptions in Google Reader, then Import/Export tab and select ‘Export your subscriptions as an OPML file. Once the file is saved to your desired location, change the .xml to .opml in order to import your feeds into NewsFire. Once you do this, NewsFire will display a popup window displaying the feeds found. Select the feeds you want to import and click ‘Add’.

One of the features of NewsFire is groups. All you do is click on the ‘+’ sign and click on ‘Group’ tab in the popup window. Name the group and hit OK. Then, just drag the feeds into the folder.

If you want to create a Smart Feed, click on the ‘+’ sign and click the ‘Smart Feed’ tab. Enter a name for the Smart Feed, choose your desired custom rules (similar to Finder and iTunes smart folders) and click on ‘Add’.

In order to decide how often to refresh a feed, just double click the feed from your list on the left and a popup window will display how often to refresh, how long to keep the item, and to only show current options.

Another is the ability to download podcast from your RSS feeds into your iTunes library.

Need to know the URL of the current site your viewing? You are able to do so in NewsFire by hovering your mouse over the feed title and in the status bar, you will see the URL for that feed.

Want to search for a certain term, say ‘Apple?’ Just type in the term in the search bar on the bottom right and NewsFire will display feed items that contain the term your searching.

NewsFire also allows you to sort your feeds. You can sort by number of new items (F1), or by most recent new items (F2), or by name (F3).

If you want to post an article you read in your feed, just click on the little communication bubble next to the left/right arrows in the upper right hand and it will give you a Twitter box with the information you want to tweet about with the URL shortened via bit.ly and how many characters you have left to use.

You can flag items to save by going to the menu bar, click on Items<Flag Current Item or use the keyboard shortcut keys Command + L. You would probably want to make a Smart Feed containing only Flagged Items. I am not sure how else you would find your Flagged Feeds.

CUSTOMIZING NEWSFIRE

In NewsFire Preferences, the Interaction tab allows the options of the functions used. Options like what pressing the space bar will do, what you want to happen when clicking on a list item, opening the web browser, etc.

The Appearance tab allows you to choose the appearance of the feed list, appearance of the item list, the mouse highlight color, content font size and if you want the dock icon to show the number of unread items.

The Feeds tab allows you to choose how often to refresh tweets, if you want to bounce the dock icon or play a sound when new items appear, when to delete items, and if you want to use Spotlight to index your content.

The Twitter tab is where you enter your Twitter username/password. Also, clicking on Join Twitter opens up your browser to join Twitter if you don’t have an account.

Overall, NewsFire is good for those of you who want simplicity. It is fairly easy to use right away and has a nice interface. I prefer using a newsreader that gives me more control over my feeds along with the ability to sync with Google Reader. If anyone uses NewsFire and would like to share their experience or frustrations about it, feel free to leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers.