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Ben asked me earlier why he should use NewsGator Online over Bloglines. Hmmm. When I wrote my earlier post about NewsGator Online, I didn’t think of it as an “either or” sort of thing – I spotted NewsGator Online, I liked the clean interface (oh! Look! Pretty colors!) and I signed up – as “christine,” which is still pretty shocking. Then I wrote my first post about it.

Now I’ve had some more time to poke around and check things out. I like the interface that allows you to sort feeds into folders (I think it’s less clunky then bloglines.) I didn’t like how I had to hunt for the Bookmarklet to use to subscribe to feeds on the fly. However, I think I just found the coolest part of NewsGator…

You can sync with all the different options, including FeedDemon. Read feeds here, read feeds there, sync up. If you used their NewsGator for Outlook version (a fee service) along with the online system, you could sync up what you had read. Even better though, FeedDemon can sync with your NewsGator Online subscription.

I took a long time to warm up to Bloglines because I generally hesitate to use online services for things like that. I worry about what will happen when they go down – I’ll be stuck high and dry without my feeds. For a long time, I stuck with my desktop feed reader, and my only issue with it was if I read something on one computer, it was still marked as unread on my other computer. Blech. Who wants to double read?

So if you use FeedDemon on your desktop along with a NewsGator Online subscription – you don’t have to worry about that any more. Just sync them up. How great is that?

If I had known about this a month ago, I would have skipped over Bloglines. This solution meets every need I had – and then some. But I’ll save that gem for another day. (Sign up for your own NewsGator Online account and see if you can figure it out!)

(Pssst… wondering what the heck RSS even is? Learn more. Read blogs, news, and content easier. Have a MT v2.6x powered blog and an RSS feed? How about a full post feed? (Excerpts are annoying, if you ask me.) Get a better template for your blog.)

I can always tell when I’ve found a service that is fairly new. I try to sign up with a username of “christine,” chuckling as I think, “yeah, RIGHT. Christine is *so* not going to be available. But it’s worth a shot…”

NewsGator Online is so new, I just signed up as “christine.” That new. Want an alternative to Bloglines? Want to read all of your RSS feeds in one place, no matter where you are at? Want a nice and pretty interface for reading your feeds? Check NewsGator Online out. It rocks!