RSS feeds epitomize what the internet is really all about – content you want, delivered on your terms. Its quite obviously different from most other media that’s existed in the past, and has actually influenced older delivery systems, the most obvious of which is cable and satellite TV distribution. TiVo and/or DVR has changed the way most people consume televised media, though without the internet as a competitive device, its hard to say how much longer such a device would have taken to come to realization, if it came at all.
I’m an avid subscriber to RSS – I have nearly 20 feeds that I subscribe to, which has made it somewhat cumbersome to keep things neatly organized in a way that makes sense and doesn’t require substantial effort. I use Windows Live Mail Desktop as my email client, both at work and at home, which has feed reading capabilities. However Microsoft doesn’t allow for any way to synchronize my subscriptions across machines. Rather, I’m forced to subscribe to my feeds manually in both locations, and even more cumbersome, I have to deal with the fact that even though my work PC knows I’ve read a particular feed, my home PC won’t know, and I have to “mark as read” with great frequency. That’s irritating.
So, I went in search of a solution, and came across FeedDemon, which is a free program that is both an RSS reader, as well as an optional (and also free) account-based manager. That is, if you create a free account, your RSS stuff is synchronized – even marking read and unread feeds appropriately anywhere you use the program. That’s exactly what I wanted! But wait – there’s more! I also subscribe to RSS feeds of my favorite podcasts, so that I get notified when a new podcast is up. FeedDemon allows you to optionally automatically download new podcasts! That takes all the ‘leg work’ out of it, and makes RSS work as it was intended – providing content on my terms.
