It has been fun watching the news spread about the latest FeedDemon 3.0 Beta even though I never “officially” announced it. It started with a couple tweets from me, then spread to Twitter at large and on to web sites like Digital Inspiration, Shooting at Bubbles and Lifehacker.
So, I guess I should make it official now: the first beta of FeedDemon 3.0 with Google Reader synchronization is now available from the FeedDemon Beta Site. If you're new to FeedDemon, you'll be given a choice between NewsGator and Google Reader synchronization at startup. If you're already synching with NewsGator, you can convert to Google Reader by selecting Tools | Synchronization Options | Advanced and clicking “Convert Now.”
Since this is a beta release, it comes with the usual “use at your own risk” warning. I try to make my beta releases very reliable, but there’s still a good chance you’ll encounter a hair-raising bug or two, so please don’t download this unless you’re comfortable using unfinished software.
I should also add that Google Reader synchronization is still a work in progress. I’ve been using it for several weeks and overall it has worked very well, but there are some missing pieces. In particular:
- Tags you add in FeedDemon are synched with Google Reader, but tags you add in Google Reader won’t always sync back to FeedDemon.
- If you convert from NewsGator synching to Google Reader synching, flags/tags you add to items that existed prior to the conversion may not sync with Google Reader.
- If you have thousands of unread items in Google Reader, FeedDemon will not download them all. This isn’t actually a bug – I do this on purpose, primarily because I couldn’t justify consuming so much of someone else’s bandwidth to download items you’ll most likely never read. If you have a ton of old, unread items in Google Reader, I recommend selecting “Mark all Read” to be free of them :)
The first two issues are ones I’m actively working on, and my goal is to have them resolved prior to the final release of FeedDemon 3.0.
PS: If you follow me on Twitter, please understand that I can’t provide tech support on Twitter (I’ve tried, but it just doesn’t work). Our support forums are a much better place to report problems and ask questions!
Does this mean we can RT your original tweet about Beta 4 now? :) :)
Posted by: critter42 | Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 04:06 PM
@critter42: yeah, I think I can lift my RT embargo now :)
Posted by: Nick Bradbury | Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 08:53 PM
Thank you, thank you, thank you for releasing this. I thought Google Reader sync would never see daylight.
Posted by: Prashant | Saturday, May 02, 2009 at 12:09 AM
Glad you like it, Prashant!
Posted by: Nick Bradbury | Saturday, May 02, 2009 at 08:30 AM
Thanks alot. This is a very nice and stable BETA release.
But there is something that is bugging me; since I upgraded from version 2.7, this Ad box is new to me. I have no problem with having an Ad box in FeedDeamon, but to me, it seems the box is kinda too big. I wish it was half size (in height) of the current size.
Regards
Posted by: Ali | Sunday, May 03, 2009 at 05:35 AM
Nick, thank you so much for this very helpful information!
Posted by: gary @ dishnetwork | Sunday, May 03, 2009 at 08:14 PM
This is one of the best update I was looking for. Feeddemon is my fav feed reader and I always missed its synchronization with Google reader. Glad that it's here now :)
Posted by: Harsh Agrawal | Tuesday, May 05, 2009 at 12:11 AM
I've been using it and works well.
Another RSS reader that syncs with NewsGator and Google Reader is RSS Banit. However, RSS Bandit seems to sync much slower than FeedDemon.
Posted by: Davin Peterson | Tuesday, May 05, 2009 at 12:07 PM