Those of you who have spent more than four minutes with me know that I’m a huge fan of newsreaders. I think they really change how you absorb news online and make it possible to read more than four blogs. I was a very early fan of Newsgator because it plugged into Outlook and made reading news like reading email. Over the years of using it I have noticed that the Outlook plugin doesn’t have the activity separation I would like. What I mean is that every time I want to read news, I have to open Outlook. And when I open Outlook, I have to read work email. “Your problem is self control,” you are thinking. Bingo! You are very perceptive. Of the two ways to deal with self control issues, removing temptation is one million times easier than actually exhibiting self control.

So with this goal in mind I went on a journey to find another newsreader. After trying literally [1] one thousand different readers, I came back to Newsgator and settled on FeedDemon. This was mostly because the vast majority of the newsreaders out there suck rocks [2]. FeedDemon is a windows client that was purchased by Newsgator about six months ago and it is the closest thing to NetNewsWire out there. (NetNewsWire is without a doubt the best newsreader written but it is sadly Mac-only.) FeedDemon has a clean interface, easy configuration of keyboard shortcuts, and it syncs with Newsgator online so you can read news from anywhere. I’ve been using the 2.0 beta version for about five months now and I’ve really grown to love it.

One of my favorite features (not uncommon to many newsreaders) is the ability to apply different views to different feeds. One of my favorite feeds is Interesting Flickr Images which is a feed of the most interesting Flickr images in the last seven days. The photo strip view allows me to page through these amazing photos quickly, while letting me drill in on photos that interest me. Flickr also produces a feed of new photos from my Flickr contacts and again, the photo strip makes it easy to page through them [3].

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[1] Improver use of the word “literally” exclusively to annoy Ken. I actually tried about 20 newsreaders.

[2] Yes, I know many of you are saying “Bloglines! Did you try Bloglines.” Oh, I did. And man does it suck. I don’t know how you can even bring it up. Sheesh.

[3] If we are not already contacts, please add me.