NetNewsWire Beta – with Google Reader sync

I’ve written about NewsFire before, what used to be my favorite RSS aggregator. The only problem with NewsFire, is that your feeds are locked down to one computer as it has no syncing capabilities. That’s where the new NetNewsWire Beta comes in, which seamlessly integrates with Google Reader, so you have your RSS Feeds on your Mac and online at Google.com.

If like me, you’ve been using an RSS Aggregator before moving onto NetNewsWire, all you’ll need to do is Export your feeds from your previous aggregator, and import them into NetNewsWire. However, this is one of the times you’ll be reminded that this application is still in Beta, as at this time, it doesn’t support importing of feeds from a OPML file. Instead you’ll need to log onto Google Reader, enter into the settings and import your feeds from there. It’s annoying, but subscribing to feeds using the button in your browser works fine.

When you first launch NetNewsWire, you’ll be asked to enter in your Google Account details, after wards it’ll start the initial sync – and download all feeds and folders that exist in Google Reader.

The new Beta of NetNewsWire has also been given a nice little refresh on its interface and dock icon, which makes it slightly easier to use, and more appealing to look at. The main window of NetNewsWire isn’t packed with buttons or Menus, so it’s not difficult to learn the basics.

One of my favorite features of NetNewsWire, is its built in Browser – that means if you ever click a link in a feed, it opens up a tab (All tabs appear in a column on the right hand side). This is really handy, but if you’d prefer to use the default browser instead (Such as Safari or Firefox), that can be changed in Preferences.

The real benefit of syncing with Google Reader, is that all your feeds are on your Mac and online at Google.com. This means you can log-onto any Mac, PC, iPod or iPhone and view all your feeds. NetNewsWire syncs with Google Reader in intervals of 30 minutes (Which is another annoyance – It would be nice to see 5 or 10 minute sync intervals) however, when NetNewsWire syncs, it grabs all the unread feeds from Google Reader and posts them down to the Application – and because NetNewsWire syncs both ways – any changes you make on the Application, will be replicated on Google Reader.

And as I mentioned the iPhone/iPod touch – I might as well mention that there’s a iPhone friendly version of Google Reader that you can load up in Safari, or you can choose one of the handful of Apps that sync with Google Reader, my personal favorite is Byline. Bear in mind however, the official NetNewsWire iPhone app won’t work with the Beta, as this syncs with a NewsGator account, and not with a Google Account.

For the past few days that I’ve been using NetNewsWire, I’ve also came across a few issues with the Beta. After a few hours of use, NetNewsWire can really start to eat up your processor cycles – at one point, NetNewsWire was using over 100% of my processor, but after a quick relaunch, it returned to normal.

All in all, the new NetNewsWire Beta has a very good feature set, and as soon as the small Beta issues are sorted – I can’t think of a better Application that syncs with Google Reader. Before downloading, I’d recommend checking out NewsGators “Known Bugs/To-Do List” found here. To download the NetNewsWire Beta can be downloaded from the NewsGator Website.