Times is the latest newsreader that I fiddled with. It is different than the usual mail styled RSS readers. Times uses an interface to try to give the reader a newspaper reading experience.  The only drawback is that you would have to carefully choose which feed subscriptions to place on each ‘page.’ This makes it a little bit of work for someone who would like a reader to automatically add feeds imported. But hey, this makes it ‘your’ personal feed reader with your own personalization. I currently have nine pages on my ‘personal newspaper.’

Lets dive in to see how to set up Times.

USING TIMES PAGES

Your chosen feed subscriptions are displayed on ‘Pages.’ Each page has three panels to drag your chosen subscription to and you can have multiple feeds in each section except for the top section. Resize your sections and move feeds around by dragging the separator line. You can add or remove pages when your interests change.

To add a page, click on File<New Page in the menu bar (or Shift+Command+N) and type in your desired page name.

To remove a page, select the page you want to remove, click on Page<Delete Selected Page… from the menu bar (or right-click and select Delete Page).

To rename a page, select the page you want to rename, then double click its title and rename the page (or go to Page<Rename Selected Page…from the menu bar), and hit enter when done renaming.

To reorder pages, click and hold down title of the page you want to reorder and drag it to where you want it to appear.

ADDING FEEDS

After you have created your own personal pages, start adding feeds by opening the feed drawer (click the pencil icon in the top-right corner). Find the feed you want to add and drag it from the feed drawer to any area on the page chosen.

To add a new feed, select ‘New Feed’ from the menu bar and either enter a feed URL directly or a site URL and Times will try to find your feed.
You can also add feeds from the Feed Drawer by clicking on the ‘+’ sign in the upper left-hand corner.

Times also allows importing of feeds from either Mail, Safari, NetNewsWire, or OPML.

To export feeds, click File<Export Feeds…from the menu bar. The feeds will be exported to an OPML file with your chosen name and location.

FEED DRAWER

When you add a feed, it will appear in the feed drawer. Here is where you can search for certain feeds, add feeds to pages by dragging to your desired page, and editing the feeds. To access the Feed Drawer, click on the pencil icon in the upper right-hand corner of your Times reader.

VIEWING FEEDS

Once you have added your desired feed subscriptions and added them to your pages from the Feed Drawer, content will be displayed on your pages. NOTE: The more feeds you add to an area, the less articles for that subscription will be displayed. You can always hit the ‘Show More’ button at the end of the section.
If you decide that you no longer want a certain feed in a section, you can remove the feed by clicking the pencil icon and then clicking the ‘X’ button on the left hand corner of the subscription area. NOTE: The feed will still be in your feed drawer. This only removes it from the page.
You can use your arrow keys on your keyboard to toggle through your different pages. (It would be nice if this feature was available to toggle through the feeds within the pages, maybe in a future update.)

If you have a feed that doesn’t contain lots of text, Times will try to download the full story from that feed’s website.

While in an article, to return to the main page, just hit the ‘enter’ key (or click on the page).

USING THE SHELF

Let’s say you find an article that you really want to read, but don’t have the time to read it. Other RSS readers use a ‘Star’ or ‘Flag’ system for saving articles to read later. Times uses a cool wood-grained shelf that you can drag and drop an article to for later reading. This is a really cool feature that is similar to the Mac dock stacks.

You can access the shelf by either clicking on the shelf button on the upper right-hand corner or by hitting the space bar.

There are four available spaces on the shelf for articles to be placed. Once the four spaces are taken, then the shelf will start creating a stack. You can also create your own stacks by dragging similar items on top of one another and rearrange your articles.  To expand the stack (if a stack has been created), hover your mouse over the location of the stack. To read an article from your shelf, just click on the desired article.

To add an article to your Shelf, just start dragging the desired article and the Shelf will appear. Continue dragging until it is on the Shelf. You could also click your space bar and it will stay open until you hit the space bar again. There is also a shelf icon next to an article that you may be reading. To add an article to your Shelf from within an article, just click on the icon next to the article name and it will turn an blue color. When you close out of the article, your Shelf count will change. The latest article will automatically be in the first column of your Shelf.

To remove an article from your Shelf, manually drag the article from the Shelf and you will here the ‘poof’ sound similar to removing an application from your dock. If you are reading an article that exists in the shelf and you decide you no longer want to keep it in the shelf, just click the shelf icon next to the article title.

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND EMAIL

You can share an article with a friend through Facebook, Digg and Delicious. While reading the article, click on File<Share and choose either Facebook, Digg or Delicious from the menu bar. This will then open you default browser.
An easier way is to choose the article from the page the article is on, right-click on the article title and you will be given the same sharing options.

To use Twitter to tweet about an interesting article, from the page the article you want to tweet about is on (it takes a little more steps from within the article), right-click on the article title and select Post to Twitter… which then opens a pop up window with the information to tweet (if you haven’t set up your Twitter information in the preferences, the pop up will display a window for you to enter your Twitter username and password). Times includes an URL shortening for use with Twitter.

To email an article of interest, from the main page the article is on, right-click and choose Mail This Article from the menu bar. Your default mail application will open with the information you want to send.

Times also offers the ability to drag an article to another application. I dragged an article to OmniFocus and it pasted the article link. All you do is just drag and drop (wait until you see the ‘+’ sign to know that it is working).

TIME PREFERENCES

General Tab: Read articles inline in times or open in Firefox, how to open Firefox, the article interface (slide or page curl),  how often to clear shelf items, and the option to automatically check for new versions.

RSS Tab is where you set how often to check for new articles, how to handle the new articles, etc.

Sharing Tab is where you enter your Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, and Digg username and password along with adding other sharing options.

Times is definitely different from the other newsreaders out there. There are some things that I think would make this much better, and maybe will be added in future releases. I’d like to see better use of the social networking without having to go to an external browser. It unfortunately doesn’t sync with Google Reader. Also, it had crashed on me a couple of times during the trial run, so I am not sure if I would want to fork out the $30.00 without seeing a few tweaks in its future releases. I still prefer using NetNewsWire, as it has not crashed on me and gathers all my feeds perfectly to date, along with syncing with my iPhone and Google Reader. Overall, Times is still new and it is definitely a different experience. It took me a little while to get it to work to my liking. Give it a try and see if it suits your needs. You can click on the icon at the end of the article to be directed to the Times web site for more information and the free trial download. If you have used Times and would like to share your thoughts, feel free to leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers.

I had previously wrote about the top three RSS newsreaders for Mac. Gruml is another full featured reader that is on the top of RSS readers available for Mac. It is still in Beta phase and seems to be continually updated. Let’s dive in and see what Gruml has to offer.

The Interface

The interface is similar to Mail. The left panel contains the list of subscribed RSS feeds, the right panel contains the feed article title with a little summary of the feed, depending on the feed, some will show more of what you would see in their actual web site. If you have a feed that you would like to read more about (usually the feeds that display only a summary), hit your return key and it will open the article in the built-in browser. Unread news are bold and in the left panel, there will be small icons with numbers next to the folders for unread items. Gruml supports Growl notifications as well.

Layout

Gruml offers two different layout styles.
The 3-column style has the feed subscription on the left, the feed item with summary in the middle, and the feed article on the right.
The Preview Below Article style has the feed subscription on the left, the feed headline with summary on the top-right, and the feed article on the bottom-right.
I prefer using the 3-column style as it is easier for me to read my feeds on a smaller screen.

Styles

Gruml gives you 7 styles to choose from.
Graphite which contains a blue feed title and smaller fonts.
Greyed (default) which has a shiny black feed title and a larger font.
Lucidr has an aqua on white feed title and lucida sans style font.
Simple Sans which has a black on white feed title and sans style font.
Simple Serif has black on white all caps feed title with sans style font.
Vanilla (which I use) has black on white feed title and smaller fonts.
Write Type which has black on white all caps feed title and courier style font.
It would be nice if there were a way to add your own styles (like in NetNewsWire), but currently, there is no option to do this.

Feed List (Left Panel)

Your Stuff
All Items, when selected, displays all of your feed items.
All unread, when selected, displays your unread feed items.
Starred Items, when selected, display your starred items.
Liked Items, display items you have marked ‘liked.’
Shared Items, display items you are sharing.
Notes display any notes associated with a shared item. To add a note to a feed item, click on the note icon with the ‘+’ sign and enter a note.
Comments display feeds that have comments.
People You Follow will display a list of feeds from people you follow.
Search is where the search results are displayed when searching from search bar in the toolbar.
Feeds
This is where the list of your feed subscriptions are displayed.
Folders
A list containing folders created either in Gruml or in your Google Reader account.
Tags
A list containing articles that have been tagged in Gruml or in your Google Reader account.
To add a new folder, just click on the + sign in the lower left-hand corner, which in turn opens a window for you to name the new folder. Click the arrow button in the window to add it to a certain folder if needed.
To remove a folder, click on the – sign in the lower left-hand corner to remove the selected folder you want to remove.

The Built-In Browser

Gruml has an integrated Safari style browser, which is very useful for reading feeds that only contain text summaries. It is also useful when using the “Send Article To…” option.

Google Reader Sync and Integration

Gruml syncs any changes you do with Google Reader promptly. This includes syncing of starred items, shared, items, favorites, etc.

Adding Feeds

In preferences from the menu bar, you can enter your Google information that you want to sync with. You can also manually enter a new feed by clicking on Feed<Add Feed To Your Subscriptions from the menu bar,  which then opens a new window for you to enter the feed information. You can also remove feeds by clicking on Feed<Remove Feed From Your Subscriptions from the menu bar.

To rename a feed, select the feed to rename and either right-click and select Rename Subscription or click on Feed<Rename Subscription from the menu bar.

To rename a folder, select the folder to rename and either right-click and select Rename Folder or click on Feed<Rename Folder from the menu bar.

Send Article To…

This is a nice feature of Gruml. It allows you to share your feed with a variety of social networks and blogging platforms.

As to date, you can share your information with Twitter (using the included URL shortener included in Gruml), Facebook, and Myspace.

If you want to save an article for later reading, you can add the item to your Instapaper or ReadItLater.

To send the article to a blogging platform, your options are tumblr or posterous.

The bookmarking platforms for sharing are delicious, digg, reddit, and stumbleupon.

To ping the information, you can use ping.fm. You can also email or print a selected article.
To use the Send Article To…, right-click from your selected article and choose the service you want to use from the Send Article To menu. If you customize your toolbar, you can add your preferred services to the toolbar as well. Or, use the keyboard shortcuts: Delicious (Shift+E), Digg (Shift+D), Facebook (Shift+F), Instapaper (Shift+I), MySpace (Shift+M), ping.fm (Shift+G), Posterous (Shift+P), ReadItLater (Shift+L), Reddit (Shift+R), StumbleUpon (Shift+U), Tumblr (Shift+B), and Twitter (Shift+T).

Preferences

There are a few preferences offered in Gruml.
General Tab is where you would enter your Google account information.
Social Accounts Tab only allows the input for your Twitter, Instapaper, and ReadItLater account information. It also gives you options for URL shortening (is.gd, bit.ly, tr.im, cli.gs, u.nu, and .tk).
Appearance Tab allows you to change the fonts for the article list and sidebar.
Advanced Tab is where you would change the menu bar and icon, URL handling, Update/notification, feed behavior, and caching behavior.

Menu Bar Notification

Gruml offers a menu bar icon which will display the number of unread articles. Not only that, when you click on the icon, it displays a HUD interface displaying the articles that are available with the name of the article item and the title. If you double-click on an item,  the article will open within Gruml’s integrated browser.

Blogging Options

If you find an article that you would like to integrate into your own blog. Click on Article<Blog With…(display will show available blogging applications in your system) from your menu bar. You would need an application like BlogThing, Ecto, MarsEdit, or Xjournal.
Once you click on the application you have, Gruml opens your application and integrates the feed item into your blogging panel.

I have noticed a few quirks in the program. It crashed on me one time and it is a little sluggish at times. It is however quick to refresh, sometimes too quick for my liking. When I unstarred, unshared, or unliked an item, there was no visual cue the change had taken place, the feed still showed in my list, so this would be a nice item to fix. Maybe showing the toolbar item change color or something of that nature. Also, there were times when an article or item list that I have marked all as read would still be shown in the list, even after checking the Mark All As Read in the menu. It would be nice to see Gruml integrate with apps like Things, OmniFocus, or Evernote. Also, Gruml lacks the AppleScript dictionary. Another important item missing in Gruml is some form of Help. When you click on the Help menu bar item, it displays “Help isn’t available for Gruml.” Hopefully, in the future, this will be integrated for people who need help with Gruml.

Gruml, however is still in Beta phase and is constantly updating. I still like the overall feel of Gruml, and will continue using it as a backup to my preferred NetNewsWire. I’d like to see how Gruml will be in a few months after more updates. To give Gruml a try, click the icon at the end of this article to be directed to their web site. If you use Gruml or have used it and would like to share your experience with other readers, please leave a comment and share the wealth with us.

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.

I use Google Reader for all of my RSS feeds. I have decided to venture outside of the usual browser and check out the various desktop newsreaders available. So, this week, I am focusing on some of the best readers.
Starting the list is NetNewsWire 3.1.7 by NewsGator (NNW for short). This is a really good reader, in fact it is top on the list. It has an easy-to-use interface and syncs with Google Reader.

PREFERENCES

General:

Reading Tab: Here is where you would decide if you want to show unread count on your Dock icon, choose how to display Updated items, like Mark as unread or Highlight differences. Also, you can decide if you want to collapse new items in Combined View layout or choose how many items to show per page.

Archiving Tab: You would choose to save news items as HTML files on your disk from here and decide how long to keep new items in NetNewsWire.

Browsing:

Behavior Tab: This is where you choose to open links. Your default browser or the NetNewsWire browser, among other items (see image).

News Items Tab: You can enable plug-ins, java, and JavaScript from here and choose your style sheet.
Web Pages Tab:  Again, you can choose to enable plug-ins, Java and JavaScript along with using a custom style sheet.

Colors:

You can change the colors in this section. It’s pretty self explanatory.

Fonts:

General Tab: Here is where you change the subscription, headlines, summaries, datelines and combined view title fonts.
News Items Tab: Choose the standard and fixed-width fonts and the minimum font size here.
Web Pages Tab: Again, you can change the standard and fixed-width fonts along with the minimum font size.

Posting:

This is where you change your settings to post to your weblog and Delicious. For posting to a weblog, you can choose your own application. For posting to Delicious, it offers you the choice to pick from the default browser, NetNewsWire, Cocoalicious, Postr, Pukka, or WebnoteHappy.

Downloading:

Feeds Tab: Change how often to refresh all subscriptions and concurrent downloads.
Enclosures Tab: Decide if you want to automatically download podcasts and add to the iTunes library or other enclosure settings in this tab.
Adding to iTunes Tab: You decide how your audio enclosure will be added to your iTunes library from here.
Downloads Folder Tab: This is where you set the folder for downloads to be sent.

Syncing:

Have NetNewsWire Sync with Google Reader by entering your Google Username/Password and merge the subscriptions.

ADDING FEED SUBSCRIPTIONS

If NetNewsWire is your default RSS reader, you can add a feed by clicking on the RSS icon in the address bar. You can add feeds to NetNewsWire by clicking on the RSS icon in the web site. Another way is to copy the link in your browsers address bar and click the ‘+’ (Subscribe) button in NetNewsWire to add the desired feed.

SPECIAL SUBSCRIPTIONS

NetNewsWire gives you the option to add Special Subscriptions. Your options are Search Engine, Tag, Local File, or Script. (I only tried out the Search Engine and Tag subscriptions.) Here is how it worked for me:

I clicked on File<New Subscription<Search Engine and typed in Apple and chose Yahoo from the choices offered (Blogdigger, Twitter, or Yahoo) and hit Subscribe. NetNewsWire brought up News articles about Apple from Yahoo and saved it as its own feed.
Then, I clicked on File<New Subscription<Tag and typed in geektool and selected from the choiced offered (Delicious, Flickr, and Technorati) and hit subscribe. NetNewsWire brought up all pictures with geektool as a tag and saved it as its own feed. Pretty cool.

PODCASTS

If you subscribe to feeds that contain podcasts, NetNewsWire allows you to either download the podcast to iTunes or to your designated download folder (to play on your own player). Here are a few of the sites that I get podcast feeds from:

http://www.podcastalley.com/
http://www.jordomedia.com/
http://www.podfeed.net/
http://podcast.com/

You would subscribe to these feeds just like you would a normal feed.

VIEWING YOUR RSS FEEDS

When you first open NetNewsWire, you will see the feeds displayed in a list on the left, along with the number of unread articles displayed next to each feed. When you select a feed, the panel to the right displays the articles in that feed. By default, the unread articles will appear bold. When you select an article, you will see either a summary, then entire article, or nothing (depending on the feed) in the panel to the right which is your preview area.

READING ARTICLES

When you double click on an article, it will open the full article on the feed’s Web site, which you can view in either your preferred browser or within NetNewsWire’s build in web browser. (You can decide which browser to use in the preferences.) You will also see tabs that can appear at either the top of the browsing area or as a thumbnail on the right side of the window, depending on your personal preference.
Another nice feature is the ability to use your keyboard’s arrow keys to browse your feeds. The left and right arrows move between the subscription and article lists. The up and down arrows are used to select a subscription or an article. Pressing return opens the selected article.

VIEWING FEEDS AVAILABLE FROM THE DOCK

When you right click on the dock icon, you be given a view of the unread count at the top, the option to Refresh All News, Mark All News as Read, Subscribe…, View items inside your Feed Folders, among the usual dock options. When you highlight a folder, the feeds available will be displayed. Hit your return key and it will open the item in the NetNewsWire browser (unless you have your preferred browser as default).

INLINE SUMMARIES AND DATELINES

You can choose to show summaries and datelines in the headlines to make going through your feeds faster. To do this, simply go to the menu bar and click on View<Layout and you can choose to show Summaries In-Line, Show Summaries Below Title or Show Datelines.

VERSATILE HEADLINE LIST

You can add date, subject, and creator columns to the headlines list and sort them however you choose. To do this, just go to the menu bar and click on View<Columns and choose from Source, Date, Subject, Creator or all of them. It’s your reader, so you can tweak it to suit your needs.

SORTING

You have a variety of sorting options.
To sort your list, you go to View<Sort By and then your options are Date, Source, Subject, Creator, Title or Arrival Order.
You also have the option to sort your subscriptions. You do this by choosing View<Sort Subscriptions By and then your choices are Name, Unread Count, Attention, Last Update, Manual Order or Sort Inside Folders Only.

SMART LISTS

Using smart lists are similar to your Finders Smart Folders or the Smart Playlists in iTunes. To create a Smart List, just click on the cog wheel located on the bottom left hand corner, you will then see a menu. Scroll up and click on ‘New Smart List.‘  A window will pop up for you to start creating your own Smart List. First, type in a name for you Smart List. Then you will go to the first drop down menu and choose from the following options: “Title, Description, or Summary,” “Title,” “Description,” “Summary,” “Link,” “Permalink,” “Creator,” “Subject,” “Comments URL,” “Flagged Status,” “Read Status,” “Followed Status,” “Subscription Name,” “Subscription Feed URL,” “Subscription Home URL,” “Enclosure URL,” “Enclosure Type,” and “Group Name.” After you choose the setting you desire, you will go to the next drop down menu and choose from the following: contains, does not contain, is, is not, starts with, or ends with. Then, if you want, you can add more settings by clicking the ‘+’ sign and go through the same drop down menus until you have the Smart List you desire. NOTE: You can also create a new Smart List by going to File<New Smart List or use the keyboard shortcut Option+Command+N.

FLAGGED ITEMS

You can flag items in several different ways. One way is to have the article you want to flag open. You can either go to the menu bar and click on News<Mark<As Flagged OR use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Command+L OR right click on the article in the article list and click on ‘Mark as Flagged’ OR customize the toolbar and place the Flag in the toolbar for one-click access.
What is cool about flagging items is that they stay forever or can be removed once you mark them as unflagged.

CLIPPINGS

Clippings provide special folders for ‘storing’ articles you want to read later. When you’re viewing an article that you want to clip, just click on the Add To Clippings button (if it isn’t in your toolbar, you can add it by customizing your toolbar), or by pressing Command+Option+S. or just drag the article to the Clippings folder.

LAYOUTS

You can view your feeds articles in either the Traditional view where the preview area appears below the article list (sort of like Mail’s email preview), Widescreen view where the preview is on the right, and finally, a Combined view, which display each article below its title in a scrolling list.

TABS

When viewing articles in tab view, you can choose to have vertical tabs with the thumbnails or the horizontal tabs (no thumbnails).

STYLES

You can choose from dozens of visual themes that determine how articles are displayed within NetNewsWire from fonts and font sizes, layouts, colors, and more.

POSTING TO WEBLOG

NetNewsWire makes it easy to post to a weblog. The first thing you would want to do is choose which weblog you prefer to use. You do this in the Preferences under Posting. You can either use MarsEdit or you can choose whatever desktop weblog application you have. Then, after making sure your settings are the way you want it, choose the article you want to write about by hitting the return key to open the article in the browser and then you click on the Post to Weblog button in the toolbar. From your weblog application, you can make changes as necessary. If you just click on add to weblog without opening the article, it will open the link along with the summary in your weblog application.

SYNCING

The selling point for NetNewsWire is the ability to sync with Google Reader. Not to mention, that if you have NetNewsWire on your iPhone/iPod Touch, you can sync with those as well.

TRACKING CHANGES

NetNewsWire has the ability to track changes when articles are updated. If a site creates a new version of an article, any deletions are displayed with a red strikethrough type and the new additions are displayed in green.

REPORTS

You can view reports that show how much time you give to a feed and which feeds haven’t been updated (which you can decide the timeframe for the report), to help you decide which feeds are worth keeping and which are out the door. To do this, you go to Window and click on either Dinosaurs, Most Attention, Least Attention or Bandwidth Stats (they are all in the same pop up window). Once the (Dinosaur tab) window is displayed, you can change the number of days for feeds that haven’t been updated by just typing in a number. To view the most/least attention, just click on the Attention tab and then you can sort the list by clicking on the Score column (with the arrow on it).In the Bandwidth Stats tab, you can view the results any way you want by clicking on any of the column headers. At the bottom of all the tabbed windows, you have the option to Open Home Page, Reveal in Subscriptions or Unsubscribe.

SCRIPTING

If you know how to create a script (AppleScript, Perl, Python, or shell) that generates an RSS feed, a Script subscription will periodically run the script and display its results. I am unfortunately not that script-savvy so I do not know how this function works.

AD-FREE VERSION OR FREE

You can pay for an ad-free version (which I believe is $14.95) or try NetNewsWire for free which has all the features as the paid version with the exception of a small ad on in the lower left side corner of your screen. You can get your copy by clicking on the icon or go to http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NetNewsWire/ for the download and more information.

IPHONE APPLICATION

There are two versions for the iPhone. The paid version, which is $4.99 or the FREE version (which I use).

I have compiled a table of the keyboard shortcuts available for download. Click the PDF icon to download.

Even though NetNewsWire has a few things to learn about, it is a really useful tool. My favorite features are that it syncs with both Google Reader and my iPhone, I like that I can use my keyboard throughout the interface, it has many useful tools like setting up folders, along with the smart folders and much more. This is by far my favorite desktop reader application. If anybody out there wants to share their experiences and tips about NetNewsWire, please leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers.