NetNewsWire: Free Newsgator syncing, discount
A new beta of NetNewsWire (a very fine RSS aggregator or news reader) has been released 
.
The updated beta (2.1b32) offers registered users a free two-year subscription to Newsgator’s syncing service, which is a third option alongside syncing with your .Mac account or FTP server for synchronising your news subscriptions between multiple Macs.
If you don’t already have a Newsgator account (free), the beta will guide through the process of creating one.
NewNewsWire is also currently discounted (USD 19.95 instead of the normal USD 24.95), an offer that will stand until version 2.1 is officially released.
Endo looks very pretty and Vienna is getting better, but NetNewsWire stands head and shoulders above the pack for stability, grunt and features.
I couldn’t do Hawk Wings without it. There’s no other way for me to get across all the information I need to see more efficiently and reliably.
If you’ve been waiting for a good time to register the full version, the time is now.
UPDATE: David Chartier at TUAW provides a list of the extra features included in the Newsgator subscription, which I should have done, but didn’t.
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April 22nd, 2006 at 5:19 pm
NNW has been ultra-stable for me. I’ve used it nearly three years and can’t remember it every crashing, even betas. Not sure what you mean by it having grunt. Feature-wise it has things I’ll never use, but lacks a few I’d really like such as boolean-style conditions in Smart Lists (which endo appears to have based on a screenshot on the product site) and several improvements for managing subscriptions.
The built-in tabbed browser (saved between sessions!) is the killer feature and has kept me from being more tempted to try endo (because of its smart group support). I keep a vague eye on development other products like Vienna and NewsMac Pro but so far haven’t been inspired enough to try them. I ruled out NewsFire simply because of the uncomfortable “politics” with its developer.
NNW is more mature than other news aggregators/readers and my unconfirmed hunch is that’s a factor in it being less susceptible to quirks caused by bogus feeds and other miscellaneous troubles that newer products and developers are still facing. And NNW has more customers, which has given Brent a larger number of “extra eyes” that have noticed and reported problems over a longer period of time.
Since NewsGator released the 2.1 beta I’ve started using the forum for support-related communication. That hasn’t been the most satisfying experience since feedback is inconsistent. But Brent said he reads everything so at least that’s an implicit acknowledgment to posts that don’t get responses. Still, when specific questions go unanswered there’s a lack of closure missing to the process. I don’t know if sending support e-mail would make a difference though I’ll probably do that if important issues for me remain unresolved (sometime after 2.1 is released).
Anyway, I’m sticking with NNW. I rely on it heavily so there’d be hassles with switching to another product and any reasons just aren’t compelling enough. Sure, there’s room for improvement but it still serves me very well. And I’ll positively recommend it to others based on my experience.
Sorry for the post length. Would have been shorter if my wife were home for dinner when I’d anticipated.
April 23rd, 2006 at 5:33 pm
As a complete RSS whore (with 300 feeds and counting), I’d like to also give props to NNW, but also say that Newsfire is also a kick-ass worthy RSS reader for OS X. While there are other additional RSS readers out there for OS X, I haven’t found any of them to come close to Newsfire as a NNW alternative.
April 23rd, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Also: I may be missing something, but insofar as I can tell, one of NetNewsWire’s drawbacks (for me, at least) seems to be that you can’t easily add a feed to a group after you’ve subscribed. That I can’t just right-click on a feed name and drop it into a group is annoying as all hell.
Three-pane widescreen viewing does, however, rock.
April 25th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Is it that your subscription list so crowded that drag/drop is a hassle? That’s one of the issues I have with managing/organizing subscriptions.
What I usually do now is either drag/drop an unsubscribed feed link directly to where I want it in the subscriptions list instead of trying to move it. Or, first select the existing subscription above where I want a new one added, possibly repositioning a bit after adding if it’s not quite right. This assumes manual sorting, of course.