Bloglines. I use it because I signed up for it 100 years ago and I already had an account once I wanted to really start using it. I don't think it's the best, but I'm too lazy to switch.

I am even more clueless than you, phoenixc, because I don't really know what an RSS feeder is, except that everyone I know who uses one says it takes up way too much of their time by making them read extra stuff on the web, which is probably as good a reason as any why I shouldn't learn how to use it.

I dont' read that much stuff online, so I don't use one. Most of my friends use google reader though.

I started using Bloglines maybe a year ago, and was pretty happy with it, but like every other whoring-after-novelty short-attention-span timewaster on line, I decided I had to try out a bunch of other options. Of them all, I probably like Google Reader the best; the problem with it for me is that it has to be associated with a particular Google/GMail identity, and since I have a couple of GMail accounts, if I'm logged into account A (not associated with Reader), I have to log out, re-log in with Account B, etc. etc. and I decided it was too much of a PITA. Bloglines works well enough, and I especially like the "Playlists" option which allows you to group and sort-of-tag feeds.

I use RSS Ticker for Firefox. I have it just to let me know when I get comments on Flickr, or posts to my blog (it's a shared blog with five of us who post to it). I like it because it's invisible most of the time.

bloglines works for me. essexjan is right though. One shouldn't go overboard with subscriptions or they'll find it overwhelming.

Yea, I probably have too many subscriptions, because there are some things I never read; I just scroll through.

I used Bloglines until this week, and am in the process of switching to Google Reader. Google Reader's list mode is mega-efficient if you have a lot of feeds or feeds with a lot of items.

Ya, my fear is that I'll be adding one more item to my list of things to do, which is why I've been resistant thus far.

Google Reader. Used to use Bloglines, but it's extremely easy to export all your subscriptions from Bloglines and import into Google Reader.

I like netvibes.

I've never had a complaint about Bloglines.

I like apps better than the web-based ones - NetNewsWire is the business, but it costs money. Vienna is very good, too, and free. (Both are for Macs.)

Just remembered why I prefer an app - you don't have to be online to use it, which is handy on the train.

I'm a vote for Google Reader. Works for me....

I too prefer apps, but only if you're only going to read your feeds on one computer. I shuffle between at least 3 and sometimes more machines, and so a webapp makes the most sense for me. I've got my boss using Attensa, though, because it integrates into Outlook, to which he is addicted.

I used to use Sage, but now I prefer Bloglines, for the reasons that a bunch of folks have already mentioned. If you want a local solution, though, and you're already using Firefox, and you like something fairly light and minimal, Sage is a good choice.

Actually, in Firefox, you can just make a "live bookmark" (in 1.5.0.9, Bookmarks --> Bookmark Manager --> File Menu --> New Live Bookmark) of an RSS feed, and you'll get a sub-menu of autoupdating sub-bookmarks, which are the feed elements. Works great for sites like AskMe, where the sub-bookmarks are the question titles.

NetNewsWire is the business, but it costs money.

NetNewsWire Lite is free! Accept no substitutions. Well, except NetNewsWire, I suppose.

I use FeedDemon. I like it precisely because it is NOT just a website but an actual program that stores content for you. This has the advantage of letting you see a history of however many entries you want to save, as opposed to only seeing the last 15 or 20 or however many the feed author places in the feed at any time. I have mine set to default to 1000 for each channel, which means that I have anywhere from a few weeks to months worth of content for each feed, that I can search/filter/browse through, all offline.

The main reason I like using RSS for viewing web sites is that it's like an email program and it shows each post as an "entry" or line in a list, and it keeps track of whether each entry is read or not, just like an email program. So when reading AskMe for example I just click on the feed and it shows me only new posts that I have not yet read and none of the old posts that I've already seen. As soon as I click on anything it changes its state to "read" so that I won't see it again next time. Of course you can change the filtering to show read posts, just like an email program, if you want to.

The main reason I like this kind of interface is that it allows me to read websites content on my own schedule: it doesn't matter how slow or fast I feel like reading, it always keeps my place and tells me what I've already seen and what's new. It doesn't matter how fast the "front page" or whatever scrolls or how busy the site is, because FeedDemon just queues up entries. Of course just like an email program you can "mark all as read" on a feed if you don't want to view each one individually. For me it really is very analogous to reading emails in an email client (like Thunderbird or Outlook) where each "post" is an email.

This is what works for me, and I find it's much easier to keep up with a large number of sites quickly compared to having to visit each one daily/weekly/whatever. It's the best thing in the world for random sites that don't update very often because I see the instant there is an update without having to poll the site regularly.

Oh and I forgot that another advantage to an offline reader (and feeds that have fulltext, like Metafilter's) is that you can quickly read the entire post without having to wait for anything to load. So for example with the AskMe feed I can scan the title or read the entire entry (not just what would be on the front page but the full text) at the click of a button without having to load anything from the net. This means it's very quick to scan through a large number of posts without having to actually wait for a slow server to display each page, and without sacrificing most of the content of a post because of the abbreviated form the "front page" takes.

Gregarius. Because my best mate wrote it and in its infancy he let me bugtest it for quirks and for user input. Before I knew it, I was hooked on the damn thing. Just like those drug dealers who give a way a free sample. Crafty bastard.

I too prefer apps, but only if you're only going to read your feeds on one computer.

That's another point in NetNewsWire's favour - it syncs with Newsgator, which means you can have different machines all showing the same stuff, including what you've read/flagged/etc., all in the folders you've set up, and you can log in to the Newsgator site and view feeds there if you're away from your own computers. Also works as a backup, which is handy.

NetNewsWire Lite is free!

Oops! I forgot about that. I wonder if Vienna has more features than the free version (it's basically a NNW clone)?

Gregarius looks pretty fab, dabitch, especially the tagging.

That's another point in NetNewsWire's favour - it syncs with Newsgator, which means you can have different machines all showing the same stuff, including what you've read/flagged/etc.

The syncing is a bit buggy, I've found. I've got 2 machines at home and my PC at home. I read view NNW on my home machines and, perhaps more often than I should, peruse NewsGator at work. I often find that I'm having to mark posts as read on at least one of the devices. Still, I love NNW - the paid version of the app has got inbuilt search, which has been really helpful of late.

Also, it would be cool if the stuff that I flag in NNW was transferred to my Clippings folder on Newsgator.

Google Reader. I switched from Bloglines and I really prefer Reader to Bloglines. The only downside I can think of is that Google Reader doesn't support sending passwords with a subscription so I can't read my Daring Fireball subscriber's feed. :(

Thanks for all the advice guys!

Rhomboid - FeedDemon sounds great but I don't think I'm ready to invest in a program just yet. I'll stick to the free apps for now and re-evaluate as time goes on.