Because I can be rather hasty sometimes, I have overlooked one important aspect that makes the free NetNewsWire (and its Windows counterpart FeedDemon) even more enticing as a favoured RSS reader: feed syncing via NewsGator is free as well¹. Which may not be news for some and not that big a deal for others, because FTP syncing was obviously free before.

Well, yes. But thanks to NewsGator Mobile² you can read news from whichever device you own that gets supported (iPhones, BlackBerries, probably some older generation devices too) and they’re always in sync! There are a few more cool features, such as overlapping or mildly distinct feeds based on your location - check the NewsGator’s FAQ for more details. Sure, NewsGator Mobile isn’t that pretty (on the iPhone at least) but it does seem to be doing a good job of what it’s meant to do. I just wish links would open in new pages :)

Syncing, for someone like a news addict such as myself, is awesome! Something tells me that once the iPhone SDK is released, NewsGator will come with a native RSS reader for the iPhone as well³ - so even better! While I understand why a lot of people are drawn to something like Google Reader, I myself do enjoy the convenience of reading news items offline every once in a while⁴.

Oh, and if you might switch to NNW, why not use iPhonesque as a Growl notification style for when your news get updated?

1. The obvious was pointed out by a blog post from one of NNW’s developers, via Daring Fireball [↩]
2. Mobile-optimized version of their online aggregator [↩]
3. After all, they have one for the BlackBerry [↩]
4. I know that Google Reader supports offline mode via Google Gears and a Firefox extension [↩]