Google Reader Gets Some AIR with ReadAir

Posted by Greg Burnham on 05/23/08 in Applications, Featured, Internet, Web

Logo For awhile now, it has been relatively safe to crown Google as the king of web-based feed readers. The ability to access favorite feeds anywhere through the everyone-and-their-dog-has-one Google account has been indispensable to news-addicts such as myself. Google Reader’s interface (while excellent for a web-based solution) can often leave something to be desired, and still doesn’t quite live up to competitive desktop-based newsreaders.

This is where ReadAir by Adam McGrath steps in. ReadAir is a a desktop interface to Google Reader, courtesy of Adobe’s somewhat-new AIR platform. The result is a very comfortable and beautiful Mac-friendly reading experience that lives outside of your favorite browser. As soon as ReadAir is installed and launched, the user is presented with a simple account login screen, and some General Preferences to control how often feeds are refreshed.

Screenshot

After the user’s Google login information is entered and the magic ‘OK’ button is selected, feeds populate inside the main interface automatically, retaining Google Reader’s folder structure. The overall layout is generally similar to Reader, but has been greatly dressed up to mimic a native Mac application. In fact, at first glance, ReadAir could very easily be mistaken for an Apple-created program.

Screenshot

The majority of the online reader’s features are available in ReadAir, including the ability to sort feeds and star posts as desired. As a word of fair warning, there is a little way to go before the application is quite ready to become your primary reader. Attempting to add feeds from straight within ReadAir yields nothing but a blank white window, and there is a long list of to-do’s on the developer’s Google Code page. Some of the to-do’s are crucial, such as an unread message count badge for the dock icon, and keyboard shortcuts.

Despite these temporary shortcomings, ReadAir is an excellent way to smoothly integrate Google Reader into your desktop experience, and certainly an application worth keeping an eye out for in the next coming weeks as more and more improvements arrive.ReadAir is a free and open-source download from the author’s Google Code page.

It requires Adobe AIR to install and run.

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6 Comment(s)

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pacheco said on

May 23rd, 2008 at 9:23 am

Very interesting. Personally, I’ve used Fluid to make a “dedicated browser” for Google Reader, and applied Jon Hicks’s excellent skin for the site.

ReadAir looks very interesting, though. Some icon changes and it could be pretty slick. I’ll have to try it out.

Bob said on

May 23rd, 2008 at 2:31 pm

I don’t get it. AIR consumes a lot of processing power, and this app doesn’t seem to do anything better than using Reader in a browser. If needed, I can keep Reader open in a tab or even in a different browser…Camino’s not doing much these days.

Chris said on

May 23rd, 2008 at 5:30 pm

I think the concept is great but it does use a lot of resources and you aren’t able to navigate using the arrow keys, I prefer to use the arrow keys to go the next feed.

Michael said on

May 25th, 2008 at 3:47 pm

Not that this doesn’t look great, but what about NetNewsWire? You can read online at the NewsGator site, read in a desktop app with NetNewsWire, and it all syncs. You can even read and sync on Windows if you have too. And all for free. Absolutely my reader of choice.

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lmjabreu said on

May 28th, 2008 at 11:03 am

“Ur Doin It Wrong!”

-1

drmike said on

June 6th, 2008 at 8:39 am

I’m brand new to iMac (and love it) after years of MS … i added my rss feeds to iMail … same look as ReadAir …

just down to taste really - i prefer everything in one place so i also forward two other mail boxes to iMail

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