Forget everything I’ve said about RSS/News Aggregators. I’ve been using Syndirella for a week now, and it is the best, fastest, most convenient app yet.
Syndirella is a .NET app, like Aggie, but unlike Aggie, it’s a full-fledged application which hosts a browser component, rather than using a browser to display its results. Another browser-based app I’ve used is Amphetadesk, which saves its subscription list in the OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) format. Since it’s an open-source PERL app, it is completely cross-platform, can be served from a static IP address, and has been modified by a number of enthusiastic users.
Unfortunately, both these browser-based programs suffer from the large size of the news data document (5Mb is not unusual for an Amphetadesk HTML file) and lack of state inherent in the HTML format. FeedReader was another program I tried, and it hit much closer to the mark, with a 3-pane interface (list of newsfeed source, list of articles, article display) and speedy operation. Unfortunately — and it might just be my ignorance — I was never able to get the article display to show me any more than the article excerpt. (NewzCrawler is one product I haven’t tried yet, as it is a commercial product, retailing for US$24.95, and I have an aversion to paying for software when there are comparable free options.)
Syndirella seems to have nearly all the features I’ve been looking for, as well as being in active development. The most recent beta release, 0.9b is available for download here, but creator Dmitry Jemerov releases near-daily alpha builds on his development weblog. (I count at least 5 alpha builds in the week since the beta was released!) The latest alpha (as of this writing), fixes some bugs and includes an installer, and runs very stable (so far) on my system. The things I’m looking for in future releases include a hook into Movable Type (and other blogging systems) to post the active item to my blog. Brad Choate has a nice long list of suggestions on his blog, quickly answered by Dmitry in his Yahoo Group‘s message list. With responsiveness and community interest like this, I think it’s only going to continue to get better.