You are here:

Review: Cyndicate RSS Reader for Mac OS X

Submitted by sheala on Sat, 08/18/2007 - 23:48.

There’s nothing I like better then finding a new program I really like. When I started reading enough RSS feeds to need a way to harness them, I ran across Vienna. A nice little reader that was easy to use and free. I’ve never paid much attention to RSS, so never knew that I might need something a little more robust. I was delighted to find Cyndicate. Cyndicate is a hearty RSS reader that can be easy to use or accommodate tougher tasks. This reader comes from Cynical Peak software and is about $30.

For me, it became easier to have a separate RSS and Atom reader after accumulating more than a few feeds. It’s easier to have them together and faster not having them crowd up my browser. To start with, the main window is the 3 frame style we are all becoming familiar with. A list of content on the left, split screen on the right, with micro and macro views of selected content. There’s a pretty standard set of preferences for style, views, sizes, fonts, etc. You can even add CSS/HTML to create your own styles. You can customize your folders and organize the way your list is viewed. The toolbar at the top has icons for Subscribe, Fetch, Delete, Flag, Mark as unread and Label colors. There is also a Search box. Since this is a Cocoa based app, you also have access to all the Mac OS X services, from the Apple menu. The preferences also allow you to set Automatic fetching and Automatic deleting. There are standard Subscribe and Import/export subscriptions menu options.

When you take a closer look at Cyndicate, you begin to see its power. You’ll see that Cyndicate is Growl supported. [Growl is an open source system-wide norifications for OS X with supported programs] You can create Smart Folders for your content list. You can set filters for downloading content. You can set a ratings system. The ratings system, trains similarly to a spam filter and then can auto rate your articles after a time. You can set your viewing preferences to view according to rating. All of this makes the price tag worth the small price, if you are someone who needs to clear a lot of RSS feeds everyday. You can view your activity manager in a separate window, to check on your fetching of articles. You can tweak settings for the content of your feeds- you can include music files, photos, JAVA and Javascript or not. You can choose how to handle links within articles. You can also send podcasts directly to iTunes.

All this is pretty amazing. What pushes Cyndicate into fantastic territory is the options for all the sharing you can do. You can include article sharing with: del.icio.us, Furl, Yahoo! my web, Google Bookmarks, Blink List, ma.gnolia, Windows Live, DIGG, Netscape, Stumble Upon, Technorati, Newsvine, reddit and Tailrank. Honestly, I had to look a few of those up, just to learn about them. You can also choose to send an email or save right from Cyndicate. You can also go into the ‘blog this’ menu item and send an article to blog editing software, to include in your blog entries.

This is a 1.0 version of this software. It’s pretty outstanding. The only thing I find missing is the ability to maneuver in between window frames with the arrow keys. Still you can use tab, shift/tab and the up/down arrows to maneuver within Cyndicate. When you're reading a lot of feeds, it's nice to save your wrist from a zillion mouse clicks.

Conclusion:

This is a great program. Cynical Peak has made a solid, easy to use RSS/Atom reader that looks good and packs some useful features. I look forward to seeing how it evolves. Oh yeah, it really has a cool icon.