Best of breed RSS Readers

Before he joined ZDNet, Ryan Stewart was a guest blogger for my other blog Read/WriteWeb. He and I have collaborated on another post, a round-up of RSS Readers. Ryan wrote the background, dividing RSS Readers into 3 categories: web based, desktop based, and The Rich Internet Application Reader. There's some crossover between these categories, but nevertheless I added my 'best of breed' picks for each category. Here are my picks:

Web based Readers

Rojo is my current favourite, although I still have issues with its relative lack of speed. Bloglines is a good solid choice, but lacks the advanced social functionality that Ryan alluded to. A Techcrunch review late March by Frank Gruber rated Google Reader and FeedLounge highly for performance.

Desktop based Readers

Newsgator leads the pack in my opinion, mainly because of its synchronization functionality. Newsgator has a second-to-none suite of RSS Reader products, covering all the major desktop platforms - Newsgator (Outlook plugin), FeedDemon for Windows, NetNewsWire for Mac, plus its other specific solutions. I can also recommend BlogBridge, a free and open source desktop reader. I've been testing Blogbridge over the past couple of months and found the smart feeds (basically custom searches) to be especially useful.

The Rich Internet Application Reader

There doesn't appear to be a market-leading RIA RSS Reader at this point. In many ways Ajax-heavy web-based RSS Readers would fit into this category - so I'd nominate the likes of Google Reader and FeedLounge, as well as apps like Goowy that use Flash. But like Ryan, I don't have an overall top pick in this category - perhaps people can make suggestions in the comments?

Question: I'm interested to know your favorite RSS Reader? Feel free to add your favorite (if you have one) in the Talkback. Or alternatively if you don't use RSS Readers, tell me why ;-)