This week, I decided to seek out alternatives to NetNewsWire, the popular feed reader from NewsGator.

My disenchantment with NetNewsWire began soon after NewsGator updated the app, switching from a private syncing service to Google Reader at the end of August. I didn’t have any trouble migrating my feeds to Google Reader, as some users did. I also didn’t mind that the updated version of the NNW desktop client displayed unobtrusive ads. Hey, it’s free (A paid version is in the works to get rid of the ad; a paid, ad-free version for iPhone is already available).

My problem with NetNewsWire is all about the iPhone app. Before NNW switched to Google Reader, my iPhone app was reliable, quick, and pleasant to use. After I upgraded to the newest version of the free NNW iPhone app, syncing began to take much longer and, more importantly, ceased to function reliably. Sometimes it would sync, sometimes it would not. It drove me crazy. Often, it would appear to sync correctly, but selecting a feed would result in a blank screen or (even more annoying) a blank screen with an embedded advertisement. I put up with this spotty performance for weeks (hoping it would get better, hoping it would be upgraded) before deciding to try something else.

I’m not saying that the NetNewsWire iPhone app is terrible. Based on user comments I’ve read, many people seem to be happy with it. I will say that, in it’s present version, I can’t use it. A reliable feed reader on my iPhone is important to me. This frustration led me to consider other options. Since there are many, many front ends to Google Reader for the iPhone, why not shop around? It was an easy decision. And since I decided to try out something new for my iPhone, I also decided to try out other desktop clients. It was sort of a reverse halo effect.

After sifting through a plethora of reviews for iPhone RSS readers, I decided to go with Byline (from Phantom Fish, current sale price: $3.99). I’m pleased with my choice. The interface is clean and simple. There are many customization settings, the best of which is that I can choose to cache from 25 to 200 feeds for offline viewing (great for subway commuting). I can also set it to cache items only when I’m using Wi-Fi, which is a handy option given I’m on a slow Edge network. Another nice touch is that I can choose to cache Web pages linked to feed posts. I can also read my feeds in landscape mode. It’s worth a look. The one glaring item I’m missing is the ability to mark a folder of feed items (or all items) as ‘read.’ As far as I can tell, I can only mark individual feed items as ‘read.’ A minor annoyance. According to the developer notes in the iTunes store, a new version is due out very shortly which promises to be a ‘major update.’ I’m looking forward to it.

As for a desktop replacement for NetNewsWire, the vote is still out. I’m currently testing two options: Gruml and feedly.

Gruml, currently in late stages of Beta, looks and operates much like NetNewsWire. The main difference is that Gruml offers more features. It allows me to send an article link from my feeds direct to a variety of social media sites. Or I can send an article direct to MarsEdit, which I find very handy (more blog tool integration is forthcoming). I can also post to Instapaper, my favorite iPhone ‘read it later’ app. More, I can share items and add notes to articles (options currently unavailable with NetNewsWire). So far, I like it. It’s easy on the eyes and is a quick, efficient way to get through a lot of feeds. It’s much easier to look at than Google Reader.

Feedly, on the other hand, is something completely different. It’s a free browser-based aggregation service (available on the Mac for FireFox or Safari) that presents your articles in a pleasant, customizable magazine style. It offers strong social media integration and fancy algorithm-based filtering/recommendations that purportedly improve over time based on reading habits. It’s also highly customizable. I’ve tried these kind of news readers before and never really cared for them, but this one is pretty slick. I vastly prefer it to the iGoogle service. I’m giving it a go. We’ll see if I like it as much a month or so from now.

Meanwhile, I’ve left NetNewsWire behind. I don’t miss it. If you have a suggestion for a killer feed reader for the desktop or iPhone, I’d love to hear about it.

OmniWeb is now a free browser. I'm a huge fan. I purchased OmniWeb long ago to take advantage of this browsers powerful features. It used to cost $15, but now cost nothing as of last Wednesday.

There are many features of this browser that make it special.

OmniWeb can manually store a set of pages in a 'workspace' so that you can easily recall them later. For instance, I have created a named workspace with five sites I use for work; a named workspace with sites related to house hunting; and named workspaces for two different projects I'm currently researching. Handy.

It also displays thumbnail previews of open pages in a fly-out window, which is a nice way to visually navigate between sites.

The best part is that it allows you to save unique settings for individual domains. This is useful for anyone, but particularly useful in terms of accessibility. My father-in-law, for example, has bad eyesight and is not computer saavy. So I set him up with an OmniWeb workspace. All he has to do is click on his workspace, and all his favorite financial sites load. For each site, I used OW's per-domain settings to boost text size to the largest settings possible without breaking each respective site. I also set up each of his favorite sites to open at a particular place on the page so he doesn't have to scroll around to get to the sections he most wants to read. And I set per-site ad blocking: this feature is fine-grained enough to select blocking of known ad sizes, pop-ups, third-party sites, and/or blocked URLs. OmniWeb allows you to optimize an individual domain so you get only what you really want to see. Again, handy.

There's a whole lot I like about OmniWeb, so I was glad to read that the browser will continue to be updated by OmniGroup (at least through version 6.0 -- it's now at 5.9). I'd like to see it go open source some day, but that's not going to happen in the short term. By the way, the browser runs on WebKit, the same engine used by Safari.

The Omni Group also made several other apps free last week, including the screen effects and presentation tool OmniDazzle, the memory optimization tool OmniObjectMeter, and the disk cleanup tool OmniDiskSweeper.

I spent the past month on a ship out in the Gulf of Mexico serving as a data manager for a research expedition. I won’t bore you with details about what I was doing, but I want to share some observations about my computing experience. I brought aboard a new 15" Macbook Pro running Leopard with a virtual install (using VMWare Fusion) of Windows 7 Beta. Windows was essential, as the database in which I did my day-to-day work was not Mac compatible. Here are some highlights:

- Data sharing: While many of the people on the trip used Macs, several people used PCs. Among us, we probably had about 30 Terabytes or so of external disk storage. Problems arose when we needed to share data. The PC people’s drives were generally formatted in NTFS. The Mac people typically used HFS+. The NTFS-formatted drives would mount on a Mac, but were read-only. The HFS+ drives would not mount on Windows PCs. No one used the FAT32 format, which is the only format that I’m aware of that is read/write on both platforms. We ended up formatting a few drives in the FAT32 format so these drives could be moved around and shared. Since my disk was one of the external drives that had to be shared around more than others, my solution was to set it up with multiple partitions: an HFS+ partition to use for my SuperDuper Clone backup, and a FAT32 partition for shared data. One interesting note: I formatted a 1TB drive with multiple partitions on a Mac in a matter of minutes. In comparison, it took about eight hours to format a 1TB drive with one FAT partition on a very robust and powerful PC laptop. Egads.

- Data backup: I was surprised that many people did not have a backup solution on the cruise. If their laptop tanked, they would not only potentially lose data, they would be out of commission for the duration of the expedition. I choose a cloned backup over Time Machine for this trip. The reason is simple: if something went terribly wrong with my laptop’s OS, I could at least boot from the cloned external drive and keep working until a point in time when I could take a time out to restore from the clone back. With Time Machine, I would have had to stop working until I solved the problem or restored the backup to the laptop (which can be very time consuming).

- Force-eject a CD: It’s good to know how to do this. At one point during my trip, I placed a corrupted DVD in my SuperDrive and couldn’t get it to eject. Usually, I can get a stuck disc to pop out by evoking terminal and typing the command ‘drutil tray eject.’ That didn’t work. I tried disk utility. That didn’t work. The solution: I had to disconnect the drive from Windows, as it was in use by Windows via VMWare Fusion.

- TextExpander: Data entry often entails typing the same thing over and over again. TextExpander is unbelievably useful for these sorts of repetitive tasks. In my case, I needed to paste the same blocks of text into my Windows database. I wasn’t sure if TextExpander would work from Mac to PC, but it did. It wasn’t as easy as it is on the Mac (i.e., I couldn’t use TextExpander abbreviations in Windows), but it did the job. Once I had TextExpander populated with a slew of repetitive text snippets, all I had to do was select a snippet from the Mac drop-down menu, then click on it to paste it to the clipboard, then paste into the relevant field in my Windows database. It was a bit cumbersome, but much easier than typing the same thing over and over again.

- Screenshots: I was planning to use Little Snapper to capture screen shots, but found this application to be too cumbersome and bloated for my tastes. I like the idea behind Little Snapper. It looks great. But it just didn’t fit into my workflow. I found myself turning to Yellow Mug’s SnapnDrag. It’s tiny, unobtrusive, and does the job well. It stays out of the way. I’ve tried so many different screen shots apps, and I keep coming back to SnapnDrag.

- iPhone: The only entertainment I brought on my trip was my iPhone. I brought music, books-on-tape, games, and some books to read via the Kindle and Stanza book reading apps. Overall, the iPhone did the job. I was duly entertained. The one exception is this: the tiny screen didn’t cut it for reading a book. It’s a nice idea. It’s not bad for quick reads like poetry or short stories. But it’s just not a comfortable or enjoyable experience when it comes to reading an entire book in my opinion. Next time I’ll bring a real book. Or perhaps I’ll have one of those Mac tablet-touchscreen-Kindlesque-thingies rumored to be just around the corner. Final point: the iPhone also served me well for screenshots on the go. In case you didn’t know this, if you press the two buttons on your iPhone or Touch at the same time, you device will take a snapshot of your screen and place the image in your Photo library. Very handy.

- VMWare Fusion: I can’t speak highly enough about this app. The ability to seamlessly run Windows alongside my Mac, to switch back and forth on the fly, to share folders, and to drag-and-drop between the two operating systems was priceless. Perhaps we take this for granted now, but just a few short years ago this would have been unthinkable.

I’ve long wished for a flexible, well-integrated tool that would give me complete control over browser choice when opening links. A couple of new applications now in public beta meet this need quite well.

Choosy

The first is a preference pane application called Choosy from developer George Brocklewurst. Once you make Choosy your default browser, you can then use this tool to direct links to the browser of your choice. Choosy can serve up only browsers that are currently running, or it can offer up all browsers regardless of whether or not they are open. You can also arrange your selected browsers in order of priority via the preference pane and choose an option called ‘use best open browser.’ This will open up the link, as expected, in an open browser that is highest up on your prioritized list. I settled on the option to have Choosy present me with a choice of all browsers, regardless of whether or not the browsers are running (this option presents a nice floating menu similar to what you see with the familiar command-tab). It looks the developer has big plans for this little app: check out his development roadmap. He hasn’t yet announced how much Choosy will cost when it ships.

Highbrow

The second is called Highbrow from Helium Foot Software. This tool offers many of the same features as Choosy, but there are substantial differences (the most noticeable of which is that it’s not a preference pane). Once you place this app in your applications folder and run it, Highbrow appears in the menu bar (and automatically creates a login item without prompting…I personally prefer to be asked). Since it runs in the menu bar, Highbrow is faster than Choosy when you wish to change your default browser on the fly. The app offers three main options: you can select a default browser from a list of all of your preferred browsers; or you can choose to have your links open up in whatever browser you most recently used (something which Choosy doesn’t offer); or you can have Highbrow ask you which browser you’d like to use to open up a link (similar to Choosy, via a small floating window). Unlike Choosy, it does not offer you a choice among current open browsers. Highbrow will cost $14 (with a $12 introductory price. No details on how long this discounted price will be available once it’s released).

Which one is best?

I tested both out and decided to go with Choosy for now. While both tools do the job, I prefer the way that Choosy works invisibly in the background. It also offers more customization options in an interface that is a bit more polished than Highbrow. If you are the type of person who likes menu bar apps (my menu bar is already quite full), or prefer to manually change your default browser per user session, try Highbrow. If you prefer to select from your currently-open browsers, or always want to choose from among a user-defined list of your favorite browsers, Choosy is a nice, unobtrusive option. The good news is that you can try both out for free to see which one works best for you.

Why Bother?

Why would you want to choose your browser when opening up a link? Web development is a primary reason: it’s often useful to see how a page renders in different browsers. Beyond that, here are few other reasons I like to choose different browsers on different occasions:

Firefox plugins. Sometimes I receive a link in an email and I want to save it in Delicious. I want to send that link to Firefox in order to take advantage of my Firefox Delicious plugin. At other times, I choose FireFox to take advantage of plugins geared towards web development, such as web developer.

OmniWeb power. I often like to use OmniWeb to take advantage of some of this browsers powerful features. For example, this browser allows me to set per-page site preferences, save multiple pages into groups for easy retrieval later on, and set up search shortcuts so I can quickly search a particular website right from the search bar. I also prefer the tabbed thumbnail views of all my open pages.

Safari speed. Sometimes I choose Safari when I’m casually browsing because it’s quite fast.

Fluid. When I’m using Fluid (which I use for my work web-based email so it appears as a stand-alone browser application), I usually prefer to open up links received in my inbox with other browsers instead of in another Fluid window.

A few other apps

Here are a few other (semi) related apps worth a look:

- Bookit. This is a handy advanced bookmarking application that allows you to keep all your bookmarks synchronized across all of your browsers (and across multiple computers using .Mac). It costs $12.

- IC-switch. This free application sits in your menu bar and allows you to change your default browser, emailer, FTP client, and RSS reader on the fly in one location.

- RCDefaultApp. This is a free preference pane that allows you to set the default applications that open for URLs, file types and extensions, and a whole lot more. It’s a must-have little management app.

So, I now have the opportunity to telework once per week. I must say that I like it. Imagine that. But what makes it so great is not so much working in very casual clothing (that's a nice way of saying 'pajamas'), but that I can work on my Mac using tools that I know and rely on.

The thing is, I spend much of my workday at home or the office using the same basic tools: DreamWeaver, PhotoShop, and a text editor. So if I use the same basic software in both environments, why am I so much more efficient at home? Here are some of the reasons I came up with:

1. Launchbar

Launchbar is an application launcher, calculator, easy file opener, etc. It does many, many things. I'm still learning hidden tricks and tips to get more out of this excellent, lightweight application. I expect it to be on any machine I use. When it's not, I get cranky.

2. TextExpander

If you type the same thing over and over again, TextExpander is a godsend. Use it to assign shortcuts to any text you want. I use it for everything from inserting a redirect link to adding a signature block to inserting an image. You wouldn't believe how much time this tool saves.

3. PathFinder

Finder is anemic. Windows Explorer makes me want to cry. PathFinder rules. One feature I particularly like is the ability to save tab sets. I have about five tabs that I like to have open when working on this site. I have three folders I like to have open when working on office projects. I can save each workflow in distinct tab sets, open each up with a click, and I'm ready to go. Having just upgraded to the new PathFinder 5, I'm also digging the split-pane view. At any rate, the main thing I appreciate about PathFinder is how utterly, completely customizable it is. I have honed it over time. It's uniquely adapted to me. It's a weapon. I love that.

4. Spaces

I'm a recent Apple Spaces convert. I didn't think much of it for the longest time, but I'm glad I gave it another look. There are two camps when it comes to using Spaces. Some like dividing up apps into different spaces and some like dividing up tasks within different spaces. It's a subtle difference that you won't really get until you try out both ways. Some may wish to stop reading this paragraph now to prevent a headache. If you want to learn more about the options in Spaces, read on.

To be fair, even if I was using a Mac at the office, I probably wouldn't be able to install many (or any) of the third-party applications listed here due to IT policies. Still, it's worth pointing out how much utility and efficiency result from third party apps. And to be fair regarding my PC use, there are a couple of tiny free PC apps that I use in the office which do contribute quite a lot to my productivity. One is called EditPad. It's a lightweight text editor that sits in the system tray. It offers tabbed pages and does a nice job of stripping out formating on text so I can pop it into a web page. The other is called HotKeyz. This lets me remap my keyboard (I use the Dvorak layout, and this lets me reassign keys so I can still use Qwerty key combos). Unlike the Mac, Windows does not have a built-in Dvorak-Qwerty alternate keyboard layout. What a shame.

So, the difference in how Spaces works is defined by checking or un-checking a preference labeled 'When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application.' If checked, you will automatically be transported to a space with existing open window for the given app when you select that app (with command-tab). Unchecked, you are not transported to another space when tabbing to an app. Instead, the app is simply selected within that space. You then have the option to open a new window of that app within your space. Alternatively, you can click on the dock icon of that app to cycle through the open windows of that app within different spaces. Note that if you've set up some of your apps to appear only in certain spaces, this won't work as expected. In this instance, selecting an app will not change spaces; but creating a new instance (or page) of that app will transport you back to the space you defined for that app. The solution, then, is to not pre-define your apps to only work within a particular app. Confusing, yes.

I've settled on the later workflow, opting to make each space task-specific, instead of app-specific. I don't have any apps assigned to particular spaces. That way I can have, say, two different TextMate windows open in two different spaces, which is nice when multi-tasking.

Either way (app- or task-based Spaces) works, though. Try both out. What I would really like is to have control on a per-app basis so I could assign a few apps to work only in one space, and other apps to work on a task-management basis within any space.

At any rate, I've finally got Spaces set up in a useful way. I think it can get better, but it's a lot better than what I have on my Office PC...which is basic tabbing through apps. It annoys me to no end that I can only cycle forward through apps on Windows using command-tab. Stupid.

5. TextSoap

I'm also fairly new to TextSoap, but it's growing more useful by the day as I learn how to harness its power. If you deal with a lot of text coming at you from various sources and in various forms (and you need to reformat it for the web or to meet some other style guideline), then TextSoap might be a tool for you. You can use it for simple tasks like cleaning those annoying > marks in emails, or you can learn some regex and really work magic on your text. Warning: not for faint of heart. I'm at the stage where I can't do much (ok, anything) with regex, but I'm giving it a go. TextSoap is still very powerful, though, when you use the more than 100 text cleaners pre-loaded on the app.

6. Hazel

I like Hazel more and more. It's a nice way to automate filing of documents, music files, app downloads, etc. Whenever I download anything to the desktop (or drop a file to the desktop), Hazel takes care of filing it away in the right place for me (it automates color labeling of folders, too). It also has a feature to remove the plist files and other miscellaneous crap associated with a file when you move it to the trash (meaning you no longer need an additional tool like AppZapper). It also takes care of emptying my trash at predefined intervals. Like TextSoap, it's one of those apps that takes a some commitment to learn and set up to your individual preferences, but it pays big dividends.

7. Color-Labeled folders

Such a simple thing. How I wish I could colorize some of my Windows folders. When you are looking at a list of dozens upon dozens of folders, it sure is nice to have a few of your favorites color-coded. I know there's that 'favorites' thing in Explorer, but I hate it. Can't say why. Just hate it.

8. OmniWeb

OmniWeb is not a free browser, which might turn some people off. It shouldn't. It's an amazing browser. Worth every penny. And it's only $15. I bought it a couple of years ago, and haven't had to pay an upgrade fee yet. I most rely on OmniWeb's ability to save groups of pages for easy retrieval in what OmniWeb calls a 'Workspace.' For example, I have four sites that I generally need to have open when working from home. All I need on OmniWeb is open up the 'work' workspace, and all my chosen pages open up. I have about a dozen such saved workspaces for different workflows. I can also take snapshots of pages at particular places. This is handy when I want a site to open and display at a point other than the top of the page. The ad-blocking is also top-notch. As are the per-page setting definitions ... for instance, I set up my father-in-law with the top five financial sites he likes on OmniWeb. Since his eyesight is poor, I adjusted the text size for each site so it was as big as possible without breaking the site. Every one of his favorite sites could handle more or less text size increases. With OmniWeb, I set the optimal large text size so the page still looked good, and it remembers each setting. Brilliant. OmniWeb also has a shared bookmark folder to access bookmarks easily across user accounts. There's much more. It's an incredible browser. It's fast, too.

9. QuickLook

I expect QuickLook to be on all the machines I use. When it's not, I find myself hitting the space bar repeatedly in frustration.

10. Things

I rely on Things to manage my to do list. Everything I enter in Things is automatically synced to my iPhone Things app. And all my 'next up' to do items automatically sync with iCal and Apple Mail. This app is great, and I look forward to purchasing it when 1.0 is released at Mac World next month.

11. Yojimbo

I haven't seen a good note/snippet manager for Windows. I'm sure there is one, but I haven't seen it. There are tons of choices for the Mac. Yojimbo is my current favorite app to collect little items that don't fit elsewhere. I wish they'd update this app, though. It's been a long time ... also wish they'd come out with the ability to sync and store notes 'in the cloud' for remote access, and offer an iPhone version. It's not perfect, but it blows away what I have on my PC. Which is a vanilla linear text editor.

12. VooDooPad

Like Yojimbo, it's a place to dump notes, but it's a different paradigm. It's an elegant little personal wiki. I use it daily. Check out the free Lite version.

13. Bean

I probably have ten or so text editors of various shapes and sizes. After paying more money than I care to admit (I'm a bit of a text editor junkie) I find myself using the free Bean more often than not. It just works well, and it's blazing fast.