In fairness, news and RSS readers have never caught on for us. Personally, I don't see the point. They only give you a brief description of the news story and you have to get your browser out anyhow, to see the rest of the story. It's just as easy to visit the source website in the first place. However, if you're one of those people who likes to read the same news from various sources, then you may not have the time to skim through each site looking for updated information. For this reason, this is why some people prefer to use a news reader.

Times 1.1.1 is a commercial news and RSS reader for the Mac that does news in a different manner. It extracts headlines from various sources and uses a newspaper-layout style to show the news in the application. As you can imagine from a Mac application, it's well designed and easy-to-use, too.

Times link.

It seems to become the norm to follow conversations, social events and the latest gossip, online. Before the popularity of the mobile phone, people made the odd landline call and would head down the pub after work and mate up with some mates. These days, we can't stay off our computer. Over Christmas a younger member of my family spent more time on his computer, discussing plans and thoughts with his friends on Facebook, than he did with his family. How have we reached this point?

Mozilla Snowl for Firefox 0.2 is an add-on for the browser that enables you to follow the latest news feeds and Twitter conversations from your friends, without having to move to another application. Mozilla have big plans for this add-on and will enable support for following Facebook conversations, AIM messages, Google Talk members and much more. Remember that the add-on is still an early preview.

Mozilla Snowl link.

The problem with most corporate websites is that the news is in the form of a press release and isn't always accessible to the end user. If you want to see if a product has been updated, you have to wade through the info to find the latest details. However, there is an easier way. People will write and update a blog and it's easier to keep an eye out on the blog than it is on the website. Take a look at the latest Microsoft Vista blog, which was the first location most people realised that the Service Pack 1 was publicly available.

YeahReader 2.6 is a free RSS and news reader that will enable you to subscribe to various blogs and use the reader rather than your web browser to read the latest information. If you like to subscribe to a number of blogs, it might be better to use a dedicated RSS/news reader than your email client or web browser.

YeahReader link.

We're not really supposed to browse the Internet during working hours. It's pretty obvious you're browsing the Internet web you have a web browser open and are skimming from site to site, morning and afternoon. An alternative is to subscribe to the news feeds provided by your favourite websites and then use an application to read highlights of the daily news. If anything of particular interest, you can use the link provided to find out more information from the website that provided the news headline.

Feedreader 3.07 is one of many new (RSS) readers that will enable you to subscribe to a news feed provided by a website then will automatically grab the latest headlines for you to examine. If you're really keen, you'll notice that Download Junkie provides a RSS feed, so why not download Feedreader 3.07 and make this your first news feed?

Alertbear is a free RSS reader that aims to take the fuss out of your favourite feeds. Indeed, despite the simplicity of RSS, many readers on the market are cumbersome and clunky, deterring users from taking full advantage of the features on offer. Alertbear’s simple interface and colour coded categories makes reading a pleasure, whilst its technique of “stacking news” to produce a “river” of content is clever and straightforward. Unlike most readers that are built straight into your browser, Alertbear is stand alone program and includes Bearkey integration and more.

Download it here.