Who Reads The News?

I, for one, am one of those fuddy-duddies that is totally obsessed with the news. In the past, I ended up visiting like 10 to 15 news sites frequently per day. It was monotonous, but I need the news to feel "plugged in" to the world. I ended up finding Google Reader, an RSS feed reader. It's been very useful with consolidating my news and tech updates that I just couldn't live without. It was okay at organizing everything. It was also very robust, and loaded very quickly. I would recommend it to anyone who is just discovering the greatness that is reading the news via RSS.

In my daily travels across the vastness of the WWW, I discovered something that I should have found long ago, being the avid Firefox user that I am. This discovery is the one and only Feedly. What it does is give you all the tools you need; not only consolidate your news reading in one place, but Feedly can organize it into many different formats. Some of these formats include categories(not unusual for some RSS readers), magazine format(very nifty), digest, and latest updates. Feedly also has a unique edge on the competition because it incorpates a Firefox extension. Because it's a browser extension, Feedly took the advantage to ad some useful tools that make it easier to ad new feeds to your account, as well as share anything you come across with your twitter minions or facebook friends, not to mention the ability to share your cool discoveries amongst Feedly users as well.

The sleek design incorporates any picture or screenshot of a video associated with the headlines. When you click a headline you see a flash pop-up with both the head line and the first few lines of your story. Some blogs will show the whole story in the pop up, which I find time saving(if only a few seconds of waiting).

Along with all of these great features, I really like the option of seeing my news in so many different formats. It makes for a quick trip to find exactly what I'm looking for. A great option that you have is that you can set which one of these pages as the one you see first when you log in.

For all of you who are current Google Reader users, you needn't worry about having to re subscribe to everything you already get there. As an extension, Feedly will automatically see your browser history and incorporate all of your Google Reader stuff.

All in all, I was very surprised to find an RSS reader that would exceed my bias towards Google Reader, and Feedly did just that. With the great way to organize all of your feeds, wide range of features and a slim and robust design, I really have come to love using Feedly.