The Definitive Guide to Mobile RSS Readers

[slitchfield]

Ewan's been trialling different ways of keeping up with the world via RSS ove the last month. Here's his definitive report on the ins and outs of RSS, and the good and the bad ways of reading news feeds on your smartphone. Recommended mid-week reading!

Read on in the full article.

[Peter321]

I use Google Reader because of the syncronised experience, and since I use Gmail as well, I stay logged in to both services at the same time.

What I like is that I never see the same news item twice - if I've already read it on the PC, it does not appear on the mobile and vice versa.

This allows me to quickly read the news anywhere I am, without being bothered by having to remember which items I have already read.

I guess Bloglines works the same way.

Sorry don't see the point of RSS, with all the effort put into reducing the web to fit a mobile screen browser why bother with it?

[slitchfield]

The point of RSS is that with a reader I can skip through all the stories on a HUNDRED different web sites in a couple of minutes. And it's utterly addictive.

[krisse]

RSS lets you see the latest news headlines from lots of sites at once. It saves you the bother of having to visit each site individually.

For example, if you wanted to see the latest news from the BBC, ITN, Reuters and CNN, instead of visiting all four sites every day you could subscribe to their RSS feeds and browse through a single list of headlines.

As Steve pointed out, RSS can scale up to much larger numbers of websites if need be. It would be impractical to visit hundreds of sites every day just to check if they have anything interesting on them, but you could quite easily subscribe to hundreds of sites' RSS feeds, so any news from them will appear on your personal feed.

I'm Google Reader until I die
I'm Google Reader until I die
I know I am I'm sure I am
I'm Google Reader until I die

[pennas]

What I really want for my phone is an RSS client that notifies me of new stories on my selected feeds, without having to specifically open the client and browse for them. Integration with the Active Standby screen would be superb for this, although I understand that this isn't feasible in the current S60 OS (i'm using N95).

[fidolatry]

I gave a big thumbs-up to Bloglines Mobile in a rundown of web mobilizers:

http://acurrie.wordpress.com/2007/11...zer-smackdown/

I haven't heard of Mippin before, though -- will have to check that out!

Have always used Google Reader on the desktop and I've categorised my favourites feeds using Tags. Having tried the mobile version I gave up because it initially showed me all feeds but I've just tried it again and managed to select my Daily News tag. Just what I wanted.

It also offers the option to read posts in full or mobile format. I think I'll be sticking to Google Reader.

Also, I have to agree, I wish the built in Web Feeds option was in the standard menu instead of being hidden away. I couldn't be bothered to set it up in the browser but I would've tried it if I'd seen an icon in the main menu....

An option not mentioned here is Opera Mini and it's built in RSS reader. It's actualy very good

[ares]

I love google reader...if google launched a standalone app for offline browsing then i would be in heaven....

[SwitchBlade]

Personally I've been a long time MobiPocket e-news user, but then I'm sure people here remember my enthusiasm for MobiPocket anyway. Yeah it's offline only, but I can sync easilly when I connect my phone to the PC in the morning (though I wish the E90 came with a cradle like the 9500), and as I work in places with no wi-fi coverage I can read my news through the day.

[krisse]

Pennas, interestingly that's exactly what Nokia's Internet Tablets do, they have a RSS headline viewer on the desktop (you can remove it if you want, but it's there by default).

I'm a RSS addict. I use free Snarfer on my PC and Opera Mini 4 on my N95. I haven't used new Opera Mini 4 so far, since version 3 was very annoying and feeds were removed frecuently and I had to subscribe to the feeds every time there was a server problem. I'm currently looking for a nice mobile reader to stay connected, but still I don't get used to read in such a small screen.

I love to use my old Palm TX to read offline news every morning using Avantgo, and don't like the symbian version of Avantgo since there are lots of problems to syncronize (I believe I have not reached the first successful sync in several attempts)...

And for those who have not entered the RSS world, it is the best tool to read news quickly and at the moment it is published.

Armando.

[jamesb]

I like AvantGo too - it can load in rss feeds to whatever link depth you need, for offline viewing. Do any of the readers function as a podcast downloader as well as an rss text reader?