ReadAir: Google Reader app built on Adobe AIR

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, web 2.0

ReadAir: Google Reader app built on Adobe AIR

by Brad Linder May 13th 2008

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]

Tags: google-reader, readair, rss

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Phil said 12:22AM on 5-14-2008

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.

Trip said 12:29AM on 5-14-2008

I've been using Prism for Google Reader now for months and absolutely love it.

ff6600 said 7:51AM on 5-14-2008

"...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?

Raz-L said 8:23AM on 5-14-2008

...another app that you had to install before...
bad Air example, no point.

Peter said 9:05AM on 5-14-2008

If I want a great desktop feed reader, I'd use FeedDemon.

Leonardo said 9:11AM on 5-14-2008

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.

James said 10:24AM on 5-14-2008

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?

mgthantzin said 12:15PM on 5-14-2008

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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