Over the past several months I have been playing around with mobile RSS readers. These include Newsgator Mobile Edition, Bloglines Mobile and My Yahoo! Mobile.
While any of these online tools are very adequate for reading feeds on the go, I found them lacking in a few areas.
On the upside, by using Newsgator or Bloglines you will only read a feed once now matter which device you’re using. I particularly like how Newsgator allows you to specify which feeds you want to read where. I set up a handful for my mobile device and read the rest on Newsgator Online. All three of these services, however, are all hampered by same problem – the speed of the browser/wireless network. What’s worse, in Yahoo!’s case they don’t link to the full post so – at least for right now – their mobile RSS reader is very limiting.
The market is ripe for a killer feed reader that does not rely on HTML/WAP. Thankfully, FreeRange Communications is fulfilling this need. Their FreeNews RSS reader (which actually is not free, but well worth the $20/yr.) is an absolute winner. It runs on virtually any phone that supports Java – including the Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Palm platforms. You can find the full feature set here.
What I love about FreeNews is its speed. It downloads RSS feeds lickity split. In addition, when you follow a feed link FreeNews provides you with the full text of the page in a stripped down, graphics-free readable format. FreeNews also supports offline reading and they make it very easy to subscribe/unsubscribe from feeds via the Web or the mobile client. My only wish is that they would sync up with a major online player, such as one of the aforementioned three horsemen of the news aggregation world.
Give FreeNews a run. They have a seven-day trial program.
Links:
Newsgator Mobile Edition
Bloglines Mobile
My Yahoo! Mobile
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
