So, the mighty Google has yet another beta product/service — an RSS reader, called Google Reader, some­what pre­dictably. Looks alright I guess — but for me it can’t get close to the FeedDemon/Newsgator Online/Newsgator for Out­look com­bi­na­tion that I use now.

I’ve been a fan of Feed­De­mon since well, before it came out (glyFX did the icons, so I got to see the evo­lu­tion of what is a very cool design). When Nick Brad­bury announced that his com­pany had been acquired by News­ga­tor, I wasn’t totally con­vinced it was a great idea, but it’s turned out really well. I have my mas­ter feed list stored in my News­ga­tor Online account, and then I have pro­files with dif­fer­ent feeds for each of my “loca­tions” — which are Feed­De­mon on my (rather neglected) desk­top PC, Feed­De­mon on my TabletPC, and News­ga­tor for Out­look at work. I can mark an item read in one loca­tion and when I con­nect at another, it’s read there too. I can also use News­ga­tor Online as a web-based reader when I’m stuck some­where with just web access. I can’t think of a bet­ter solu­tion, although I still use Feed­De­mon more often than the oth­ers as the app is just so supremely usable.

Recently News­ga­tor announced that they’ve acquired Net­NewsWire which I under­stand is the reader of choice for a lot of Mac users — so it seems they’re really plan­ning on own­ing the RSS reader space (and doing a great job so far).

On a side note, Nick Bradbury’s had some health issues lately, so as a long time fan of his work here’s hop­ing he makes a full recov­ery and is back to cod­ing his amaz­ingly usable inter­faces really soon. Also I read he’s a Glenn Danzig fan, which I also am — although I think I’m the only one in Aus­tralia! Get well soon Nick!