Blog Reading applications help you manage staying up to date on blogs and RSS feeds that you want to read.
FeeddlerRSS
- Free
- Syncs with Google Reader
- Keeps track of read and unread articles
- No way to suppress read articles from the view
- The downside is that when viewing the app horizontally, it doesn't use the document list to list individual posts. Instead it uses the list pane to (only) display lists of individual site. Instead it displays the post list in the main window, and then uses a large popup to display the article content. I prefer NetNewsWire's approach.
NetNewsWire
- Syncs with Google Reader (and NetNewsWire Desktop)
- Keeps track of read and unread articles
- No way to suppress read articles from the view
- When viewing the app horizontally, the list pane initially lists folders. Click on a folder, and it expands, revealing the list of sites inside. Click on a site, and the list pane slides to the left to reveal the list of individual posts, leaving the main content pane to view the content.
- Using the application is a joy to for reading RSS feeds. Awesome! Gorgeous! Better than the desktop client!
InstaPaper
InstaPaper is a different kind of tool. The concept of InstaPaper is: when you are at your computer (or iPad) and you come across an article that you want to read later, you click a special "Read Later" JavaScript bookmark which sends the page to your InstaPaper account. The InstaPaper service then "transcribes" the text (and
some images) from the article. It doesn't capture the whole web page — It tries to eliminate the add and navigation content, and leave just the text and images from the actual article. You then connect the InstaPaper iPad application to the Internet, and it downloads all of the articles you have marked as "Read Later" to your iPad. These articles are actually downloaded, so that you can read them later without an Internet connections.
- Often times when reading an article, there will be a link to another article that you want to read. Of course, with no Internet connection this isn't possible, so you have to leave the article in the "unread" bin so you can remember to go back to it later to follow the link.
- Some websites break their articles into multiple pages. If you don't notice this, you will miss part of the content. This is not really a limitation of the iPad or InstaPaper, but rather a problem with websites that break articles into multiple pages to increase their page count and advertising revenue. Nonetheless, it is a limitation to be aware of.
- Some articles have videos or high-res photos that InstaPaper does not capture.
- InstaPaper formats the photos a little on the small size and could be formatted larger for the iPad. Hopefully this will come in an updated version.
- There is no way to move an article into a different folder on the iPad for organizational purposes. Hopefully this will come in an updated version.
- I would also like InstaPaper to automatically be able to organize articles into folders anatomically, say by date and/or by site.
MN K12 Tech Coordinator Tips & Tricks
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