A while ago I decided I wanted to start using RSS for my news. I don’t visit a lot of sites daily so I was missing a lot of stories and blog posts I would find interesting. I originally started writing my own RSS reader, but ended up deciding to just go find one because I didn’t have time to finish writing one. I tried A LOT of RSS readers but ended up settling on Feed Wrangler.

I listened to David Smith on some podcasts and decided to give his service, Feed Wrangler, a try. It actually works very similar to what I was trying to make so it’s been the one service that’s stuck for me. It’s a bit pricey (compared to other “free” services) but I think it’s worth the price.

Feed Wrangler has both an app and a web service you can log into. It also allows you to use it as a backend to other services. I use the Feed Wrangler app and the website. The web service is pretty basic but it gets the job done. It helps me blow through my feed quickly when I’m surfing the web.

The app isn’t anything to write home about, but it works really well. I can quickly scan through my RSS feed and then read whatever story that looks worthy of my time. It shows you the story if it’s imbedded in the RSS or you can simply go to the actual site. You can create "Smart Streams" that let you filter through your feeds for keywords and using logical expressions. It has a few options and I use it to do quick looks at news topics. I have feeds set up for Programming, Action Figures, Ole Miss, etc. You can also set it up to do podcasts, but I don't use it as my podcast client so I can't really speak to how well that works.

Over all I am pretty happy with the service. It lets me use RSS and use it the way I want to use it.