I switched from Google Reader to NewsGator/FeedDemon as my primary means of following all my non-LJ blogs and RSS feeds that I follow. I’m actually quite happy with FeedDemon the more I play with it, as it has a few features that I find rather helpful that make it one-up google reader
1) you can right click on a feed name to mark the feed as “read”. Now that doesn’t sound all that impressive, but it was one of my biggest gripes about google reader, that it was inefficient to “mark all as read” for a specific feed because you had to load the feed summary before you could mark them as read.
2) it supports synchronization with NewsGator’s web reader, and not simply synchronization, but selective sync, so when I log in from work it’ll show me updates from TechCrunch but not from Comics Curmudgeon, but when I get home, any Comics Curmudgeon updates will be waiting for me.
3) Using a native OS based reader software is significantly faster and more responsive than a web-based interface, particularly when you’re clicking over to the blog entry page itself to read comments without subscribing to comments.
4) Offline mode. You can download all the unread feeds with images to catch up on when you’re somewhere that doesn’t have net access. For the most part, this is something I rarely use, but when I need it, its extremely helpful to havel. How handy would it have been in Uganda to have been able to download blog posts as easily as email to read later when I’m not paying for net access by the minute? Or handy it might have been to download blog posts to read on those busy traveling days where you do a lot of hurry up and wait, such as sitting at the airport, or the other week when I was hanging out at the church patio for an hour between when Costco closed and service started. Yes, this has potential to be a useful perk.
Do any of you read blogs and feeds? How do you keep up on them? Do you use a blog reader? Do you check each page where there might be updates individually? Rely on email notifications of new content?