Love Google Reader, but wish there was a desktop version of the RSS reader so you didn't have to open a web browser every time you want read your feeds? ReadAir is an Adobe AIR-based utility that lets you launch Google Reader as a standalone application. Since it's built on AIR, ReadAir runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Currently the program's default skin has an OS X look and feel, but the program will be skinnable in the future.
Overall, ReadAir does a pretty good job of making Google Reader feel like even more of a desktop application than it already does. But there's one major feature missing: keyboard shortcuts. We kept finding ourselves clicking J hoping we could view the next story without grabbing our mouse. But no dice. Future versions of ReadAir will include keyboard shortcuts and the ability to view more than 20 items per feed. And at that point it my actually be worth downloading and using ReadAir. For now it's pretty much a pretty proof of concept.
[via freshAIRapps]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-14-2008 @ 12:22AM
Phil said...
Why not use Prism to make a standalone link to GR? I'm with you guys on this -- it seems like an odd proof-of-concept.
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5-14-2008 @ 12:29AM
Trip said...
I've been using Prism for Google Reader now for months and absolutely love it.
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5-14-2008 @ 7:51AM
ff6600 said...
"...but wish there was a desktop version of the RSS reader so you didn't have to open a web browser every time you want read your feeds?..."
instead you open another app... how efficent...
custom skins are great. google, do you hear that?
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5-14-2008 @ 8:23AM
Raz-L said...
...another app that you had to install before...
bad Air example, no point.
5-14-2008 @ 9:05AM
Peter said...
If I want a great desktop feed reader, I'd use FeedDemon.
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5-14-2008 @ 9:11AM
Leonardo said...
It's crap.
1) There's no way to log out.
2) No way to access multiple accounts. (It's basically the same thing)
3) If you uninstall and reinstall it remembers everything and there is no way to start from scratch.
I'll say it again: it's crap. Love the skin, though.
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5-14-2008 @ 10:24AM
James said...
Meh, you have so much to do in your life you can't wait ~20 seconds for Firefox to start up? I mean, this whole idea of making a kinda-sorta desktop app out of a webapp.... who does this?
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5-14-2008 @ 12:15PM
mgthantzin said...
Google's Ajaxy Reader interface is far much better than this.
I couldn't even run it smoothly. First time, it asked me my credentials. I provided them. But, application (somehow) hanged.
No feed items were shown. So, I exited the application, and relaunched it again. When I clicked refresh, I saw introspector. Some undefined value error. I couldn't find any (accessible) place to update my credentials (yet).
This thing just does not work (for me).
Peace:
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