FeedDemon 2

Many free newsreaders can deliver the latest news from a flurry of hand-picked publications and blogs onto a single sign-in page. Yet the full-featured, US$29 FeedDemon 2 stands apart from the crowd of free newsreaders. If you're a power reader and researcher who needs to keep track of a wide array of publications, this application is terrific. However, if you follow news from only a handful of sources, a freebie such as Bloglines or a home page like Google Home should meet your needs just fine. Because FeedDemon is Windows-only, Mac users should check out its cousin, NetNewsWire 2.

This painless download took about five minutes in our tests on Windows XP. During installation, FeedDemon holds your hand. Don't know OPML from a URL? No matter; FeedDemon's first setup choice, for newbies, recommends feeds in subjects that include entertainment, health, sports, and so on. Or if you're already comfortable with RSS (Really Simple Syndication), just import feeds from NewsGator, an OPML file or URL, or a Windows Common Feed List in a few quick steps.

FeedDemon packs its many controls and customisable feeds into a clean interface. Lose your place? A drop-down menu lists what you recently read.

Once open, FeedDemon 2's layout arranges headlines and stories within the center pane, with a list of publications and other feeds along a narrow left-hand column. Drop-down menus and buttons along the top provide copious choices. Lose your place while jumping around stories? Just click the back-arrow button or select the smaller arrow to unfurl a list of your latest reads. Keyboard shortcuts work -- such as Ctrl+W to close a tab -- and you can customise them. The star icon lets you add an open story to your Internet Explorer Favorites, though we also wish for a quick icon that would add stories to a bookmarking service such as Del.icio.us or to a news aggregator such as Digg.

To add more feeds at any time, a FeedDemon keyword search lets you choose to look through 10 search engines, from Blogdigger to Technorati. You even get five Advanced choices to show the style of your feeds, such as Photo Strip or the purplish Prince theme. Right-click a publication name to bring up Feed Properties, to update the feed, or to mark it as read. And if you own NewsGator, you can synchronise the feeds between the two programs.

We like the customisation afforded by FeedDemon 2. You can set this app to display full articles, excerpts, or headlines only and arrange by feed name, date, or title. The clean layout enables you to categorise and automate your feeds, making it easy to separate, say, your recipe feeds from news subscriptions. FeedDemon opens tabbed windows within its interface, so you can read right away without waiting for a new window to pop up, unlike the Rojo reader's default settings. FeedDemon's thorough Statistics menu lists feeds that receive the least or most of your attention.

FeedDemon lets you set up Watch lists to track when specific keywords emerge within your feed subscriptions.

FeedDemon 2 lets you create News Bins into which you can toss stories to save. You can also set up Watch lists to scan for keywords within incoming feeds to help you spot, say, the latest recipes containing both basil and tomatoes or else new stories about, say, post-traumatic stress disorder among war veterans. FeedDemon's Cleanup Wizard, recommended for use every few weeks, will sweep away old content. Yet FeedDemon's lack of social networking, which Bloglines and Rojo emphasise, won't help you discover new stories recommended by other users.

Luckily, you can take FeedDemon with you by accessing your feeds at newsgator.com from any Web browser. And if you rely on podcasts to get through the morning commute, you can hook up the free FeedStation to automatically save new shows from your FeedDemon My Podcast folder to your iPod or other media player. FeedDemon 2 can sync with iTunes and devices running Windows Media Player 10.

Support for FeedDemon 2 includes a well-organised online knowledge base and user forums as well as a cursory tutorial. There's no help by telephone, but you can ping the company via e-mail with detailed questions. We usually received helpful, thoughtful replies within several hours of sending a query.

FeedDemon 2 is a solid tool for information junkies, especially for those in media or academia who need to juggle streams of data from all around the Web. (If you'd rather embed your feeds into Microsoft Outlook, however, consider NewsGator 2.6 Inbox.) We find FeedDemon to be worth the price, but if you're a light reader, check out a free online newsreader, such as Bloglines instead.