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From Brad Feld’s blog Feld Thoughts comes word that Newsgator is now making all of their feedreader software products available free of charge. Feld explains Newsgator’s reasoning in this article, and provides several links to related articles by Newsgator employees as well as links you can use to download the products or get more information.
I’ve used both Newsgator Online (which has been free all along) as well as FeedDemon (which used to cost 30 bucks annually) for over a year now, having switched to the Newsgator products from Bloglines. I’ve never regretted the switch at all, and both the online and installed versions of their readers are fast, full of useful functions and navigation capabilities, and just fun to use. And they synchronize with each other, so you can keep up with your reading from any computer anywhere, and either tool will always know how you handled your feeds with the other.
I also use Newsgator Online to build and maintain the My Blogroll and My News pages for this site. You can read more about how to do that in these two articles:
Creating a Semi-Automatic Newsgator Blogroll on Your WordPress Blog
Check out Feld’s article, poke at the links a little, and give Newsgator a try. You can even subscribe to afewgoodpens just to see how things work!
Update: I just wanted to add a link to this post by Nick Bradbury, the creator of FeedDemon, highlighting some of the differences between using a desktop and a web-based feedreader. As Bradbury points out, one of the great strengths of FeedDemon is the way it functions as a full-featured browser, allowing you to switch from reading feeds to visiting web sites instantly within the same session and windows. I originally used the online version more than the desktop version, but have recently switched, preferring the speed and flexibility of the desktop version when I’m on my computer at home, and typically using the online version only when I’m on a computer where I can’t install the software locally.
. I’m sorry to hear about plumbing problems at your house. I’m pretty sure that it is a quite distraction when you hope to be able to spend times on other interesting...