I have for a long time been thinking about finding a good RSS reader, I have from time to time stumbled across some good sites with interesting content but the RSS reader in IE does not seem to be quite good enough. I don’t want to have to go into a special pane of IE to view my feeds, I would like them to pop up by them self.
Anyway, so far I have found this Alertbear (not Alertbar as I first though, but bear as in the animal), it is quite good – still missing a few customization options (I would like to be able to decide the update interval of EACH feed separately, but Alertbear only offers one update interval for ALL feeds).
Alertbear come preset with a bunch of feeds, and you can add your own feeds quite easily. Once you have added your feeds you can configure Alertbear to how often it checks for updates (sadly as mentioned only ONE interval, not one per feed) and what should be done once news are received (popup etc). Mine is set to show headlines for 20sec upon receiving them.
There is also a ‘History’ function, this is more like a regular RSS feed reader but quite a good one (you get it by right clicking the tray icon and clicking “Show history”).
All in all it seem like something very close to what I have been looking for (about 94% of my needs are met I would say), there are some cosmetic and customization issues but they are minor. Anyway, if you know of a better alternative do tell..
.