Synchronise Your RSS Feeds on all Your Devices Using Google Reader

Here’s a handy little tip if you’re looking for a better way to synchronise your RSS feeds between your work computer and the numerous other places you may read your RSS items (your iPhone and Ubuntu installation, for example).

For absolutely ages, I had RSS items to read in Outlook 2007 on my work PC, Netnewswire for iPhone, and Google Reader on my Ubuntu PC. As my feeds list grew I found myself skipping posts I’d already read while in search of new material to read. Not great.

The solution is based on Google Reader – and fiendishly simple to implement.

1) Use Google Reader inside Outlook 2007

Outlook 2007 has an RSS feeds folder of its own. Rather than importing your OPML file into Outlook and having each individual feed as a subfolder, just make Google Reader the homepage for your RSS feeds by clicking “properties”, navigating to the “home page” tab, and setting it up like this:



The end result looks quite cool – hat tip to Lifehacker for this one. I think this has the added benefit of speeding up Outlook 2007, as you’re freeing up the mail client to get on with what it’s supposed to be doing – handling mail.



2) Get rid of Netnewswire and install Bylines for iPhone

Bylines is the app Google should have developed for Google Reader. Simply install from the iPhone app store, and set the application up with your Google Reader login. You can add stars and share posts, email items to friends and, the application caches your feeds for those times when there’s just no signal.

Here’s the application on my iPhone (*may not be actual size):



3) Get Readair for Ubuntu (Adobe Air App – works on all OS’s)

ReadAir is an application built on Adobe Air that brings Google Reader to your desktop:



It’s a wonderfully simple and easy to use RSS platform with the only missing feature being the keyboard shortcuts offered in the browser version of Google Reader. There’s definitely keyboard shortcuts in the development pipeline and you can keep your eye on feature requests and their progress by monitoring the discussion in this Google group.

So, finally, all of my RSS feed items are synchronised wherever I’m reading them from and I can just concentrate on soaking up info from all of the amazing bloggers I like to follow. RSS related headache resolved…