To keep you updated with the latest technologies, Free Reader is the fastest possible way, which automatically downloads updates from your favorite websites. Desktop notifications proves very beneficial to them who have slow internet connections and find it difficult to surf the net time and again. Google provides to its users services like Gmail and Google Reader to cater their needs.

For quick mailing and to reach out to the latest posts available on your favorite websites, these services can help a good deal. For providing notifications for your Gmail account, there are a number of desktop notifiers which informs you about any new mail received. But there are very desktop notifiers extends this facility to both Gmail and Google Reader. GWatchman is such a one.

GWatchman is a windows portable freeware Gmail and Google Reader update notifier. Using this is a child’s play. You start with a single click and after a few clicks you have it all. This application only requires to know your Google account information,i.e. your username and password and the time interval ranging between 30 seconds to 3 hours, as per your choice, in which the application has to be updated. If you do not want audio updation, you can very well disable this feature but the overhead of clicking on them to get the updates increases. You can open the pages of your choice by clicking on the respective icon.

If you are skeptical about any sort of conflict with notifications from different notifiers, then shed it all!! GWatchman uses Growl support to show notifications and thus the problem wont arise. You can even decide the position on the window where the notification has to be shown. Whatever settings you make are stored in a XML file in the same folder as where the application is stored and can be accessed easily.

Download GWatchman

According to Wikipedia, “Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline.”Here, the name Atom applies to a pair of related standards and RSS, abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication, is a unit of web feed formats laid to standardise publishing and revising works like blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a consistent format.

Espresso Reader

Of the several applications existing which provide comfy feed-reading experience on the desktop, the most innovative application, I came across is Espresso Reader.

• Espresso Reader, a third party Google reader app is not only handy, but is also visually appealing, and provides different functionalities which seem quite appealing to a user.
• An Adobe Air needs to be installed, that makes Espresso Reader  work on different OS’s like Windows, Linux, and Mac
• It has a certain resemblance with a simple Google reader but there is much more you can explore in it.

Getting started

• Enter the Google username and password to sign in. The application works under two modes-list and magazine. On the left hand side, all folders and subscriptions are in tree view.
• Click on any folder to expand and list out all subscriptions in it.
• An option is there to sign in to twitter, just to keep up with your followers. In both List and Magazine views, there are options to share items on Google Reader or Twitter.

The main interface has three sub-sections. The left most sidebar keeps all articles of any subscription listed.  The middle sidebar bears the content of these articles and lastly, the right sidebar shows similar stories or items.

The similar stories or related items section is very versatile. Most stories are covered by multiple blogs and if you are a follower, you will find much duplicate content. Espresso deals with duplicate content by loading all feeds ahead of time. In the local database, parses them to find all duplicate content and then finally displays them as related stories in the related items sidebar

The Magazine View:

The magazine view is wonderfully executed. On choosing any folder or subscription, it will list all articles on the main interface. Currently, it only displays text. The developers are trying to include an additional feature of adding photos for its next release.

The List View:

By default, the application starts in List view and only shows updated feeds, or in other words, feeds which are unread. To view all subscriptions you can simply change the mode to All Feeds.

How to manage so many feeds?

Navigating through your feeds in Google Reader is a nuisance, especially when you have millions of feeds to follow daily. Expresso, provides a solution by offering “Quick Jump”. Just Click on the spacebar and you can see the quick search textbox which will let you instantly jump to the folder or feed in your subscription. Expresso also supports keyboard navigation.

Espresso in the future

Being the opening public release, the developers have only concentrated on the core features. They plan to add a lot more in the upcoming releases, which include enhanced features like:

• Offline access.
• Photos in magazine view.
• The choice of opening the link in the integrated web browser or the default browser,
• Ability to add new feeds or move them to different folders and many more.

The size Espresso Reader takes

It takes approximately 60MB to 95MB of system memory. As it is an Adobe Air application, it is expected and should be fine for most users, but it is expected that memory usage should remain below 50MB.

While it supports all OS where Adobe Air installed, it was first tested on Windows 32-bit and we found to work flawlessly.

To get it now, click on Download Espresso Reader

After the launch of Gmail Gadget for Google Desktop last December ,the web wizard Google has come up with Google Reader Gadget for Google desktop.But you need to have Google Desktop 5(for Windows and Linux) or a higher version to install the Google Reader gadget. The RSS junkies can now stay updated with of their most loved RSS feeds without firing up the web browser.You can proceed further as given below.
After Google Desktop 5 is installed ,move to download the Google Reader gadget. Once you select any RSS feeds subscription, the Google Reader gadget automatically updates the Reader gadget with new posts.
Due to a technical limitation of Google Desktop gadgets, full HTML feeds won’t render fully, but clicking on an item title will take you to the original website in your browser