Amit Agarwal has the scoop: I’ve been experimenting with making FeedDemon sync with Google Reader. It’s something we get a lot of requests for, so we decided to see what it would entail to add Google Reader synching to both FeedDemon and NetNewsWire.
I should make it clear that it’s not 100% definite that this feature will see the light of day – it’s still in the experimental stage. I sort of have an unwritten policy of not promising a feature until I’ve already coded it, and there’s a lot of coding left to do here :)
But assuming that Google Reading synching is added, I’m curious to know what specifically you would like to see. Beyond the basics of synching (i.e.: ensuring that changes you make in Google Reader are reflected in FeedDemon, and vice versa), what could I do to make the integration more useful?
One thing I’ve added already is sharing – just click FeedDemon’s “Share” icon to add an article to your Google Reader “Shared Items” page. But I’m guessing there are some other features in Google Reader that I’m not aware of which could be really nice to take advantage of.
The biggest feature I want from google reader is the ability to mark feed items as read as you read them. For example, as I am scrolling thought a feed reading items in google reader they are automatically marked as read. This seems like it would be a simple feature and would add a lot to feeddemon.
Syncing with a GR’s sharing would be the biggest thing for me. It would also give me the option to use GR online.
Nick, you could create a shortcut key profile that maps to Google Reader’s keys. This may not be a great feature for FD users, but GR users will be able to adopt FeedDemon a lot faster that way. Hope that helps!
Wow, this would be great! I love using FeedDemon on my computers, but when I don’t have access to my PCs, I use the NewsGator site. Sadly, the NewsGator site is a little slow, so it’s annoying to use. Combining Google Reader and FeedDemon would be the best of both worlds: FeedDemon for an amazing desktop client, and Google Reader for a better feed experience on the web.
The only feature I really want to see is the ability to somehow sync your clippings folders with Google Reader. I store articles I want to read in the future, as well as articles to share (using FD’s RSS clippings folder).
Thanks for all the great work you do!
for me it was basically just being able too see friends shared items and share my clippings with Reader.
Syncing with Google Reader would be great! But the thing I love about Google Reader and miss the most in FeedDemon is automatically marking items as read as you scroll through them. Well, that and using Firefox (with adblocking). FeedDemon still is a great program, though.
I really hope this feature makes it in this release or the next. Syncing with Google Reader is a terrific example of what I would have been willing to pay 30.00 for an upgrade and/or would be happy to have an ad based client.
as always keep up the great work!
I would love to see the FD Blackberry and Windows clients sync everything with GR. This includes feeds, folders, articles read, deleted and saved as well as keep the ability to manage which feeds to see on the Blackberry.
Here’s my RSS consumption setup and workflow: My least important feeds do not show up on the Blackberry (I set this up in the online version.) During my morning and evening commute, I use the blackberry to read and save for later reading as many of my important feeds as I can. Once in the office or back at home, using the win32 client I read all articles that I saved for later reading and catch up on other feeds. I would like the option of using GR as another desktop client or even in place of the FD windows client.
I hope that the FD Go for BB isn’t going away!
There are a few items I’d like sync’d:
– Sync tag names as well as what posts you’ve tagged and with what.
– Sync public/not-public status. You can mark tags as public/private and from there create a public feed. Actually, it seems Reader’s tags are closer to FD’s clippings. Personally I’d like to see the ability in FD/NewsGator to create public feeds from tags.
– Sync the shared bucket. Your default clipping folder would map to Reader’s single shared bucket.
waiting for this greatest feature :)
LABELS, LABELS, LABELS… Please…
Nick – I’m one of your ashamed defectors to Google Reader. I’d love to come back to FD if it’s right. The big pieces:
– Sync down with images (this would one-up Google gears – which just grays out the images).
– Starring
– Support for same keyboard shortcuts
– Same read/unread behaviors as GR.
Can’t wait to play with it!
-Rich
Is the share icon you refer to in the 2.8 beta? I’ve hunted for it in 2.7 without much luck. I have shared clipping folders w/RSS, but sharing into Google Reader? I know I can pull any RSS feed into a Reader folder and then set it up as shared, but from FD into GR-Shared? I can’t make my UI look like the screenshot.
I’m about 50:50 FD:GR. Tagging shared items is the key feature I use GR for.
– Starring
– Sharing
– Mark/unmark as read
– labels
– adding/removing feeds
and I would be very happy :)
@Randy: Mapping the GR shortcut keys is a great idea. Luckily, I already mimic many of them (J/K to move through articles, for example), which should make it easier to do this.
@David: yes, the “Share” icon was added in FD2.8 – see http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2008/10/really-simple-s.html
YES! I’d love to see NetNewsWire sync with my Google Reader subscriptions. I want to be able to read either online in Google Reader or NNW sharing the same subscription list and have the read & unread articles maintained in both places.
Right now it’s one or the other. I can’t use both Google Reader & NetNewsWire without having to catch up on thousands of unread articles whenever I switch.
I think one feature of Google Reader that would be useful in Feed Demon is the concept of Notes. Google Reader has two types of shared items – the regular shared items, and “notes”, which are shared items with an extra field to add comments.
Since these notes have their own dedicated feed in the same way the shared items do, it makes sharing articles that you enjoy with your own added commentary a feasible concept – this feed can even be imported into your own personal blog.
The Google Reader experience would be greatly improved by the addition of Feed Demon and NetNewsWire as clients, particularly Feed Demon’s offline capabilities.
For me, starring is pretty essential: both being able to mark as starred and read starred items back.
My Google Reader workflow is to scan down articles, consume quick ones as I go, and mark bigger ones for reading later by starring them. I’d like to do the same thing in FeedDemon.
I would really welcome GR sync in FeedDemon and NetNewsWire. I’ve stopped using it on my desktop since I moved away from Newsgator (don’t like the online version, which is what I use at work currently, and the iPhone version isn’t as good as GR equivalents).
Bottom line: properly implemented GR sync (and let’s face it Nick, if you do it, it’s hardly going to suck, is it?) would make me a FD user again overnight.
I used FeedDemon when it wasn’t free until the Google Reader days. I work on two/three computers every day: workplace desktop (windows), home desktop (osx), and my laptop(windows) and Google Reader it’s the best solution for me, but if you and Simmons are planning to sync feeddemon/netnewswire with google reader…you’ll make thousand and thousand people more happy.
I have been begging for this feature for years! I would LOVE to see it. I bought a copy of NetNewsWire way back in the day, thought it was great when you made it free, but I would be more than happy to pay for a new version that syncs with Google Reader. Seriously. Even the full license price that it used to be.
As far as requested features: sharing is much appreciated, and so would labels/tags (I believe they are actually called Tags in gReader, but whatever). The ability to add new feeds to gReader from NNW would be great as well, especially the special feeds that NNW can create, like tag or topical searches from services like Technorati and blog directories; it would be great if those get synched back up to gReader and its various mobile UIs. This is probably the one feature I miss the most from NetNewsWire.
Great to hear you’re tinkering with this. Good luck!
Well, simply put if I can have the same status of the feeds across FeedDemon, Google Reader and Newsgator, I’ll be a very happy man :)
I’m not bothered about Google Reader syncing to be honest, but I am very interested in being able to sync with multiple sources. I’ve had an outstanding feature request for a couple of years asking for the ability to sync to both my Newsgator Online and my Newsgator Enterprise Server accounts. My NGES account is used to subscribe to a number of internal newsfeed sources. Our NGES is behind a firewall so there’s no way of syncing to it from home – but that shouldn’t stop me reading my non-work feeds. I’d like to have an Outlook-style, multiple accounts arrangement where I can add NGO/NGES/Google Reader and view/read them all at the same time, and if I’m outside the firewall the NGES account just “works offline” till I’m back in the office.
HOLY MONKEY! I would love it if I could read my GR feeds using the Newsgator iPhone app. I had to buy a GR app just to keep things in sync. If I could go back to NNW-iPhone and sync my GR feeds I would be in HEAVEN!!!!
PLEASE!!!!!!!
As long as you have images for OFF-line viewing it’d be a winner. I hate that Google Gears doesn’t do that.
I’d install Windows on my Mac to run FeedDemon just for that feature. Or is there a Mac Java version?
I’m assuming it’s have the basics:
Mark unread (needs)
Starred (needs)
Shared (needs)
Shared with notes (needs)
and view by category (not necessary but nice).
Possible Bonus features:
Show me feeds that haven’t been updated in a while.
Mark feeds older then ______________ as read. (either auto-magically or manually).
make it real nick and you will be loved! :D
I hope it does see the light of day, I’ve been waiting a long time.
One idea that just came to me: be able to choose which source (i.e. newsgator or google reader) to sync each feed with (rather than all newsgator or all google). Some feeds seem to behave better with newsgator and some with google.
Thanks for all the gerat work on FD.
Mapping flagged items (FD) to starred items (GR). Flagging items is one of the most important features of FD for me (as well as synching with NG).
I really like GR, so I don’t expect to switch to FeedDemon for desktop, connected reading. The two things I would love are:
– Desktop offline reading that syncs with GR when I’m back online.
– A Windows Mobile offline reader that syncs with GR when I’m back online. (I would definitely pay for a good one of these.)
Thanks!
What i think is really crucial is the ability to comment on your shared items. in google reader, it is called “share with note”. We really need a way to comment on an item/clipping, and not only because that is the whole point of sharing – to publish your own take – but also for the integrity of the original author. I think it is good manners not to just clip something to share it, but to comment on it. It’s rude to just republish the work of so many others in a link blog without doing any work yourself!
What i would REALLY love, is a way to share a part of an article, instead of the whole thing.
Also, I wish there was a way to comment on items for my own benefit, i.e., “why did i clip this again?”
I would very much appreciate Google Reader sync. Basics for me would be:
Google “star” = FeedDemon “flag”
Google “share” = FeedDemon “share”
That’s it! Please do it, and make my life happy!
I’m using Google reader here and there without any sync. Anyway this is good time to get to know with some of advanced features.
Making FeedDemon sync with Google Reader is cool !!!
It is really useful.
I used to use FD daily. But because I would read feeds at work then get home and read. I left FD ONLY because I would have to go thru and mark things that I read early as read. Syncing would be a great addition, and I would start using FD again. I found it to be the best one for me and love it.