I've tried several types of RSS readers, but haven't had much luck finding one that works the way I want it to:
- Standalone readers: The problem I've found with them is that they don't (and really can't) maintain historic information on the feeds you subscribe to. You just get a snapshot of the current feed state, so would have to stay connected 24 hours a day to not miss anything.
- Web-based aggregators: I used the bloglines aggregator for a while. I liked that it kept track of old posts so I didn't have to check feeds 24 hours a day to stay current. The thing I didn't like was that you had to mark an entire feed as read/unread, and couldn't mark individual posts. (You can mark certain posts to keep, but that's not the same thing.) And if you accidentally click on the wrong icon, it marks your entire set of feeds as "read". Argh! That happened a lot ...
In my frustration, I did a search for RSS readers on wikipedia, and discovered something I never knew existed: email-based aggregators! [UPDATE 4/24/2006: Wikipedia has inexplicably taken down their list of RSS readers. A very very similar list can be found here: RSS Aggregators]There are several around, but after looking at their sites, I chose Squeet. This is how RSS reading should be! Now posts are delivered to my mailbox where I've set up filters to place them into various folders by topic. Each post is an individual item, so I can mark them read/unread/deleted just like normal messages, and they happily sit there forever until I get a chance read them. What's more, switching machines is now painless - the feeds sit in my IMAP account, so I can grab them from any machine (just have to set the filters up on each machine).
