Omea Reader – Top All in One RSS Reader

Omea Reader

This might not be new news for some, but for me, who has been hunting for a standalone RSS reader, treats this as an absolute dream come true. Strictly a personal endorsement, I have my reader on as long as my computer is on. What I like about this software is its uniqueness of making it a multi-functional program which allows you to have most of your online activities organised within one window.

Interface & General Features
To those who have been using applications like Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook, or any other applicatons which are similar in terms of its Graphical User Interface (GUI), should be thrilled to know that Omea Reader has in fact utilizes the same concept. Multi configurable windows / sections / columns which make navigation somehow more manageable and pleasant to work with.

Now, the main topic / function of Omea Reader is of course the RSS Reader, but as obvious as what it actually does, let’s look at the other features that Omea Reader provides. I won’t be covering all of the obvious / more technical features, as I will leaning more on the features one can see being a basic user. On top of an excellent RSS Reader, you’ll get a bookmarking tool, which allows you to bookmark websites, categorized in any categories you may or may not create. You’ll have a News reader, and additional feature which definitely boosts your information gathering sources.

Contacts
You can keep your contacts as well, and all of these are nicely organized in various organized categories, namely date, unread, annotated, clippings, flagged, categories which you saved your information in, etc. I’m sure these additional features need no explanation as they’re as obvious as they can be. I’ll leave it to your own “experimentations” to get to know them better.

Other Features
The other feature which I find exceptionally useful is the Notes section. Write any notes you want to remind yourself of an upcoming event, or anything you fancy. Add related links, images and other form of formatting.

All of us these items can be searched using it’s internal search engine. So if you have a huge database of feeds and news, this’ll come in extremely handy. It has a straightforward type-in-and-search area and its advanced search feature for a more “specific” search.

Flexible Toolbar
The other thing which interests me, although not a new revolutionary feature, is the drag and drop bookmarking toolbar at the top. You can practically drag any items including RSS feeds, news, bookmarks, notes into this toolbar and let you access any of these essential information by a click instead of navigating your way through to the respective information you’re seeking for. If you’re a Firefox user and utilizes the Bookmarks toolbar, then you know exactly what I mean, only this time around Omea makes it much much more interesting.

Now let’s go to the main feature this post revolved around. The RSS Reader.

I like this feature particularly well due to the fact that it stores the older RSS feeds, nicely organized in titles such as “Last Week”, “bla bla”, etc. I might not have tried all the RSS readers out there to provide a thorough comparison, but among the ones that I’ve used so far, most of them only downloads the recent feeds and automatically deletes the older ones, leaving you only with the recent and new feeds. For me, this archiving feature is gold, and exactly what I’m looking for.

Once installed, you’re also given the option to import all your bookmarks from all of your existing Internet browsers, and not forgetting it’s option of installing the Omea browser plugin which allows you discover feeds in the websites you’re browsing and ultimately giving you the option to add it into Omea if the content attracts your attention.

Feeds Categorization
As usual, all the feeds you’ve subscribed into Omea can be further categorized into folders to get them organized. And the folders won’t stop just being folders, you can have subfolders and supersubfolders, super super subfolders if you get what I’m trying to say. Although this is a good feature if you have a complex information structure, I personally wouldn’t recommend having a very complex / deep subfolder structure for the reason that it’ll only make it more complicated. Keep it simple and it’ll make your life easier.

The RSS feeds are displayed in the most right column, depending on the author’s settings, you might see a full post or an excerpt of his / her post. If you’ve subscribed to a blog’s feed, you’re given the option to view the particular post’s comments, RSS style. Now who said you have to go to each blog and click on each posts to read the comments? If you need to add in your comments, fear not as a “Comment” link will be provided at the bottom of each feed which upon clicking will be opened within Omea Reader itself, using it’s internal browser. The browser is pretty obsolete though, as it doesn’t support certain javascripts and flash, but better than nothing eh?

I guess that’s all. Try it out if you haven’t, did I mention that it’s FREE? Yes free. Now go and download and try it out. And to those who are itchy to get more feeds into your reader, drop by here and here and check out the top 40 most popular RSS Feeds, according to Feedburner.

Have fun!