Just because you subscribe to an RSS feed doesn't mean you want to read every single thing in that feed. What if you read Download Squad just for Brad Linder's posts, or you're only interested in posts about Google? FeedScrub might be what you're looking for. It lets you vote each of your RSS articles up or down, training it to only display the stuff you care about. You then subscribe to the scrubbed feed in your reader, and you're good to go.

Where FeedScrub gets things right is at the bottom of each item in the scrubbed feed, where they've put in buttons so you can train FeedScrub directly from your reader. Where it gets things wrong -- but only a little bit -- is by giving you one set of preferences for all of your subscriptions, instead of letting you export them as separate scrubbed feeds. I'd like to break my unread count down by individual feed, not aggregate it into one scrubbed one.

This blog's parent company, AOL, has launched a new myAOL portal. The site includes three new services:

• myPage: a personalized start page
• Favorites: an updated feed reader
• Mgnet (pronounced "magnet"), a customizable news page that selects news for you based on your reading preferences

The feed reader feels a lot like a cramped version of Google Reader, but with a nifty new "mix and share" feature that lets you share a group of feeds with others. The personalized start page looks pretty much like every other AJAX start page you've seen in the last year or two. But Mgnet is pretty cool, if not 100% original. You have to use it to really get a sense of it, so we whipped up a little screencast showing Mgnet and the other services fit together. It's available after the jump.

We woke up this morning thinking it was a slow news day. It turns out there's plenty of news going on in the world -- it's just that Google Reader hasn't been keeping up with all of our favorite RSS feeds.

Sometime around 11:00 last night, Google Reader stopped updating feeds. The online RSS reader started working again at about 9:00 this morning. A Google representative wrote in the user forums that the service should catch up on all your feeds over the next few hours.

If you're someone who relies on RSS feeds for your news every day, this highlights one of the problems with depending on a single online service. With all the talk about online applications replacing offline programs, and even web-based "operating systems," it's good to have a reminder that even a company with Google's resources can have service outages.

Make sure to bookmark some of your favorite pages. Or better yet, set up a desktop-based RSS reader like FeedDemon or RSSOwl as a backup.

[via TechCrunch]

These days it seems like the whole world has shifted over to web-based RSS aggregators like Google Reader and Bloglines. If you're a holdout and prefer to use a Windows desktop application reader, you might be pleased to note that NewsGator's FeedDemon has recently had an update to version 2.5. FeedDemon is widely accepted as the best Windows-based offline reader, and the only reason that it doesn't kill the competition is that it is a commercial product, whereas it is competing against a host of free alternatives.

Anyhow, there are a lot of people that use FeedDemon and those users can now take advantage of the new features that have been added to it, like better support for offline reading and a very well conceptualized Popular Topics report.

The new offline reading functionality gives users the ability to prefetch unread items, which will store not only all images in unread posts, but a configurable number of linked pages. While this process can take awhile, it gives you what is essentially a full-featured feed reading and browsing experience while offline. Good stuff.

The new Popular Topics page lets you see at a glance which topics are being linked to and commented upon often amongst the feeds that you are subscribed to, with a callout that shows what is most popular amongst all of NewsGator Online's users. Great stuff.

For similar functionality on a Mac, check out NetNewsWire, also owned by NewsGator.

FeedDemon and NetNewsWire are undoubtedly top-notch products, and ones that we have used regularly in the past. Unfortunately, they may be some of the best and last in a dying breed of software; with the recent addition of offline browsing functionality to Google Reader, there is one less reason not to simply consume your feeds in a browser. Working in a browser for feed reading adds the advantage of not needing to switch contexts from feed reader to browser, or work with an under-powered built-in browser in an offline reader. Since you're dealing with web content, what better place to do so than in a browser?

Feed reading might be a little time intensive for some busy bodies. Open an application or web location, read, and repeat. How about making it a little easier? Anothr is trying its best to speed feed reading up. We covered them back in October with the release of their RSS aggregator for Skype, and now they enter the market with a reader for users of Google Talk and Jabber clients.

To get Anothr up and running, add the contact name "anothr@gmail.com" to your friends list in Google Talk. The Anothr RSS alert bot will send you back an IM with links to manage and share subscriptions. You can enter website links, or upload OPML files to import sites and get the news ball rolling. However, this solution might only be good for a few important news feeds. I couldn't imagine getting bombarded with a feed update every 2 seconds.

If you are looking for a simple way to read your news feeds, this could be for you. It could be an annoying way to receive updates to your favorite news, but if you want to be notified immediately of updates, this is a great way.

Blackberry and Java-enabled cellphone users can now use NewsGator Go!, the mobile version of NewsGator's RSS feed reading software. Up until now, the NewsGator Go! was only available for Windows Mobile devices.

While web-based NewsGator accounts are free, NewsGator Go! will set you back $30. But the program has a few nice features, including the ability to synchronize with your online account, the ability to email stories from your cellphone, and one-handed navigation.

While mobile web browsers are getting more and more powerful, few can handle web-based feed readers like NewsGator. And so while it would be nice to be able to surf to your free web-based account using a Blackberry, it might be worth paying for a version optimized for small screens and slower processors. Not sure it's worth paying $30 for, but definitely worth something.

There's a free trial available.

[via MobileCrunch]

Alien6 recently released a new RSS reader for Windows Mobile, and it looks like a great little news reader for people who prefer the look and feel of a newspaper to RSS feeds. But here at DownloadSquad, we're RSS junkies, and it's hard to beat a good RSS reader for sifting through piles of information every day.

And lucky for you, while there are some great commercial feed readers for Windows Mobile, including Alien's A6 Times and Illium Software's NewBreak, there are a number of free programs that perform almost as well.

I started using Google Reader a few months ago, largely because it's fast, customizable, and lets me combine all of my feeds into a "river of news." In other words, I can read my news based on when it came in rather than what source it came from.

But up until I switched to Google Reader, I was a pretty big fan of NewsGator. It's got a clean look and feel, it's easy to use, and has podcasting support. But it was slow.

NewsGator has released a new beta version that makes use of AJAX to speed things up a bit. For example, when you click on the settings tabs in Newsgator Classic, you're directed to a new page. In Newsgator Beta a window pops up on your screen and disappears when you click close.

The page doesn't need to refresh every time you switch feeds or mark items read. But Newsgator still takes longer to load feeds than Google Reader. And I've grown rather fond of my river of news.

Otherwise, the new beta looks and behaves remarkably like Newsgator Classic. While this is great if you've been using Newsgator for a while, it doesn't seem to offer many new compelling features that would convince me to switch back.

Today's release of FeedDemon 2.1 beta seemed like a nice little treat. After the release of NewsGator Go! last week, it felt like a really solid one-two punch from NewsGator. Right on!

But then as I'm using the new version of FeedDemon, I find updates notifying me of minor (but pretty wonderful from a usability perspective) updates to Bloglines, and the Google Reader update that David already walked us through. Holy cow! Since we already know what's up with Google Reader, let's go back and have a look at the updates to Bloglines and FeedDemon.

Bloglines
Bloglines have given a very nice overhaul to the feed list on the left hand side, adding some carefully done Ajaxy goodness, like yellow fades for unread count updates. There is also a subtle notification of the number of new unread items as you obsessively press the R hotkey to refresh your sidebar. Feed list updates occur more often. All in all Bloglines feels snappier than before, although that could just be the excitement of new features talking.

FeedDemon
FeedDemon's update is also on the subtle but usable side, including a big security update to prevent malicious code inserted into an RSS feed from being executed. An additional feature has also been announced, which is called Popular Topics. FeedDemon can scour all of your subscriptions to see if there are any common threads linking them together. If so, it presents them in a custom view showing you items that are of enough interest that multiple people are talking about them. Be forewarned, though, you need to be subscribed to a fairly substantial number of feeds for this feature to be of much use. FeedDemon also feels a bit snappier, although no reference to specific performance updates were given in the release notes. If you're a FeedDemon user, I'd suggest getting involved in helping test the latest release. Nick's software is always so polished that even a beta version is very usable.

So what's the deal - everyone picked the same day to release new features? Although with the release of NewsGator Go! and the ability to take my feeds offline in my Pocket PC, I thought I'd finally settled on a platform, I now have more playing around to do with Bloglines (it's just more fun to use now), and Google Reader, the dark horse. The Google Reader update really came out of left field, but I can't wait to explore it since their first take at a feed reader was, well, weird. Looks like they've cleaned up their act.

On the post where you told us what RSS reader you liked and why, there is a great newsreader that I was a little curious if anyone would mention but no one did. NewsIsFree.com is a site that offers excellent feed reading and aggregation for free. I was impressed with the amount of features and how usable this site is. Since I like to stick with something quick and dirty, this site is a bit too busy for me, but you may find it perfect. It offers the ability to post blog entries from news feeds you find right on the site. There is even a news clippings page to help you organize your clippings. Some of these services are part of the paid subscription, but it looks like Newisfree.com has a lot of potential to be a new favorite reader.

Nowsy is feed reader that lets you add an unlimited number of feeds as panes on a personalized home page-style page. It has a clean, uncluttered interface but otherwise does little that will blow anyone away or make them switch from Netvibes or Google Personalized Homepage. For newshounds, however, it does have once nice feature: You can search among your feed items. Typing in a search term will filter your feed items so that only those items matching your search will show up. Though most decent feed readers have search or filter features, some users will prefer having their search results in this format. Nowsy also lets you create multiple pages, so you could have your feeds broken up by topic, etc. Nowsy lets you play around with most of its features without registration (via a cookie), but if you want to make sure your preferences are never lost you'll need to register.

Download Squad readers totally rock! To everyone, thanks for all the feedback on our RSS Readers: SOUND OFF! post. There are so many options to choose from, and I haven't had a chance to really go through them all, so I will be posting my thoughts on the top RSS readers in the next week or two. DLSQ's reader-cloud is much wiser than I am. Several of the readers you mentioned I had never heard of. Thanks to everyone. I have a new favorite out of all the RSS readers I glanced at over the weekend. Drumroll and spotlights please...GreatNews is the winner! Not only was GreatNews the most recommended at last count (tied with Sage) but it is simple and powerful. I love it. I really like the newpaper layout and easy to use features. My favorite part about it was the ability to enter a web address, and GreatNews will pull any feeds from the page and list them at the bottom via an RSS icon. A simple click or two and you've subscribed. It is a piece of cake. Here are your top results:

• GreatNews - 8 votes
• Sage (firefox plugin - 8 votes
• FeedDemon - 6 votes
• Flock - 6 votes
• Google Reader - 6 votes
• Bloglines - 5 votes
• Netvibes - 5 votes
• Omea - 4 votes

Others were Bloxor, Alesti, Abilon, Endo, FeedLounge, FeedReader, Gregarius, Klipfolio, Onfolio, RSSbandit, Fizzle, Thunderbird, Vienna, Opera, RSSpopper, IntraVnews, Pluck, Reblog, SharpReader, Rojo, NewsAlloy, NewsHutch, IE7, humanized, BlogBridge, Awasu, a few homegrown varieties (very cool) and a few others I may have missed.

I need a new RSS reader. I am kinda picky, hard to please, and a power user / administrator. Anyone out there know of an RSS reader, whether by download or on the web, that you consider to be the RSS killer app out there? I have tried a bunch of them, bloglines (not intuitive enough), NewsGator (not intuitive enough but the one I use right now), feedreader (not bad but lists all text, not actual web pages from links), Wizz RSS plugin for firefox (not bad, but is way too hard to use), Rojo (adds feed I don't want), Google Reader (too cumbersome), etc. Even if you use the ones I just listed, please enlighten me as to which one you can't live without and why. Are there others worth trying? Usually on download squad we bring you all the newest, latest, and greatest. Now it's your turn. Tell me why you love the RSS reader you use and why it's the best. I may just end up finding a new one to use. Ready, set, go!