If you read blogs on a regular basis, you ought to consider downloading some speciality software for that purpose. I use FeedDemon, from Bradley Software, and have been pleased with it. A feature I especially like is its ability to consolidate new blog entries, news items, etc., into a newspaper-like format. (I have no connection with the company except as a customer.)
For keeping up with on-line debates at sites like TitusOneNine and Pontificator, I use a browser called iRider. It allows you to have many Web pages open at once. It also lets you "thumb-tack" particular pages, such as comment pages for particular blog postings, so that they automatically get reloaded every time you open the browser. (I learned about iRider in an Atlantic Monthly article by James Fallows, and I have no connection to its company either.)
A popular "news aggregator" is NewsGator, which has a version that runs as an add-in to Microsoft Outlook. I tried that one one briefly, but uninstalled it, first because I like to keep my Outlook installation as off-the-shelf as possible, and second because I don't need the distraction of having news articles so readily accessible.
A Wikipedia article lists a large number of other blog-reader software packages.
For open-source fans, the ThunderBird 1.0 email client from Mozilla has a built-in RSS reader. The software can be obtained for free at the Mozilla website.
Posted by: Wayne | February 02, 2005 at 06:42 AM
I find Bloglines does everything I need, and because no software is installed on my computer, I can use it from any computer at any time wherever I go.
Posted by: Simon Sarmiento | February 05, 2005 at 02:48 AM