For as long as I can remember I’ve been using NewsfireRSS to get my several-times-daily fix of news from my favourite sites and blogs. I have looked at some alternatives out there such as Vienna but since I’ve paid for Newsfire then I didn’t really feel inclined to give that up.

I had heard several people out there recommend NetNewsWire but since that was around $30 to register then I stayed put. That was until the announcement came yesterday that NNW 3.1 was now available completely free of charge. I downloaded it to see what all the fuss was about and thought it was pretty nice, but still not sure if I was ready to elbow NF just yet. That was until I made a discovery - NNW synchs with your iPhone or iPod touch!

I set up a mobile account on the NewsGator website so now I can receive my RSS subscriptions on the iPod touch when I’m browsing in bed or over breakfast in the morning. Then when I head up to the iMac I won’t have to read the same thing twice as it will automatically synch and say “Yup, she’s read that!”.

So yeah, I think NNW has stolen my heart away from Newsfire. The only thing I would change is the automatic feed refresh which will only refresh often as every 30 minutes. I know I can just manually refresh whenever I like, but the option to have certain feeds do it every 5-10 mins or so would have been nice. But, it’s just a minor niggle and not something that would sway me one way or the other when it does other wonderful things. Anyway, maybe not having feeds come in every 5 minutes will mean I get more done as I’ll be less distracted. Oh wait, I have Twitter for that…