Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

Windows; Mac;
One thing that has always amazed me is the fact that none of the desktop feed readers currently available synchronize with Google Reader. Maybe I’m wrong and I just haven’t searched hard enough, but we’re getting a little closer with ReadAir. It’s a free (and open source) download that leverages off of the relatively new Adobe Air to bring your Google Reader feeds to your desktop.

At first glance it will probably remind you of Newgator’s free NetNewsWire app for Mac’s, and I’m guessing that there was definitely some inspiration taken from it. Don’t be fooled by the appearance… this is a both a Mac and Windows application since it runs on Adobe Air (doesn’t appear to work in Adobe Air for Linux). Albeit it does look a little weird on Windows since the skin is still the same, but it’s not any weirder than iTunes on Windows.

There are some pitfalls though. You can star, share, and search items in your feeds, but there are no offline capabilities. For some people the whole point of using a desktop feed reader is so that they can easily read the news when their not connected to the Internet, but you can’t do that with ReadAir. Plus there are no keyboard shortcuts, and no more than 20 items can be viewed in a single feed. Yeah, those are some deal breakers for me.

I think I’ll be sticking with NetNewsWire until something better comes along, but I do like Google’s online feed reader better than Newsgator’s. So hopefully a better Google Reader synchronization option will come about so that I can use a desktop client on my computer, and use Google’s new iPhone interface when I’m on the go.

ReadAir Homepage [via Download Squad]

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