Most of you have probably heard me rant (well, more like bitch) about the lack of a decent RSS feed aggregator lately. Now that I’m sorely addicted to blogging and reading blogs of others like me, I’m struggling to find a decent RSS aggregator to manage and display all my various feeds. On average, I daily check up on about 30 different RSS feeds, some of which are updated hourly. The majority of these are just random blogs from around the web, mostly dealing with things of a technology nature: several employees of big companies (like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc.), but there are also several News feeds (CNet, the BBC, the Register, Slashdot), which can be updated at random and are generally less important to me.

When I started out on this quest for the superior aggregator, I had a few conditions that I wanted it to meet:

• 1 – Web Based Interface
  I use multiple computers every day, and while my laptop is with me most of the time, I want to be able to login to a website and check my news feeds from anywhere. I have webmail for my email accounts, why would I settle for anything less for my RSS feeds?
• 2 – Client-side Application
  When I’m away from an internet connection for any period of time, I want to be able to plug in and download all the stories in my feeds at once and store them on my laptop for viewing at a later time, without a net connection. I have Outlook (or equivalent) program to download my email, why would I settle for anything less for my RSS feeds?
• 3 – Synchronization
  If I add a feed to the client-side app, I want it reflected in my web-based interface the next time I synchronize my feeds, and vice versa. I use IMAP for my email, and if I create a new folder in either the webmail or in my email client, it’s reflected in both places. Why would I settle for anything less for my RSS feeds?

Now, I didn’t think these were terribly unreasonable demands. I figured this would be an easy matter, to find a quality service that provides these features (I’ll even pay up to $5 or so a month for a service that does this). Unfortunately, I was sorely mistaken. More than a week later, I’ve found several programs that do one or the other (either web-based or client-side) very well, but none of them can successfully meet all of my expectations.

And so I ask you, my loyal (and likely bored) users: Do you know of a service I’ve missed? I’m growing desperate as my options dwindle.

For reference, the bigger names I’ve tried are:

• Web-based
  • Bloglines Absolutely Sucks
    Bloglines is probably the king of web-based aggregators. Unfortunately, they lack flexibility. I want to be able to specify how often my feeds refresh for one, and the interface just doesn’t seem to be as useable as I would expect a web-based utility to be.
  • Newsgator Second Place
    Newsgator is my 2nd favorite service at the moment. It’s got a nice clean interface, very professional looking. It’s also got very quick page loads, which is impressive (as some of the pages have lagged, particularly when updating feeds). They also have an Outlook plugin to provide a client-side tool for reading feeds. Unfortunately, I don’t really want to have to keep Outlook open to read my news feeds. I want a small dedicated client. Perhaps this will come soon.
  • Web RSS Reader First Place
    The Web RSS Reader over at Plech is very impressive. By far, this is the best web-based aggregator I’ve yet to see. No, you still can’t specify the interval at which feeds are refreshed, but the interface is by far the most superior. It’s just the cleanest, most efficient interface available (or that I’ve seen at any rate). Newsgator is very similar, but the way they display data just doesn’t seem as logical or obvious as that at WRR. Still no client-side option, but a nice start. Unfortunately, it’s coded in ASP and seems to lag randomly at times without reason. There was also a random “Service Unavailable” error for about 3 minutes last night, which had me worried. We’ll have to see how this service pans out in the long run.
• Client-side
  • Mozilla Thunderbird First Place
    While actually intended as an email client from the Mozilla Foundation, Thunderbird also has support for RSS feeds, which it displays as accounts and folders (just like with email). You can specify the interval at which feeds are refreshed, but the UI seemed a tad buggy. Being a Mozilla project, I have no doubt that any bugs will be resolved very quickly, although I’d expect display errors (such as which folder the posts should be stored in by default) to be long gone by their 1.0 release.