NetNewsWire 2.1 public beta offers Newsgator syncing, more enhancements

It's been a long time coming boys and girls, but Ranchero has unveiled a public beta version of their much-anticipated 2.1 update to the most popular RSS reader out there: NetNewsWire. As Scott's preview earlier this month mentioned, the most buzz-worthy new feature by far is headline syncing with Newsgator (the app's new overlords). However, the change notes for the update list a whole new set of features that I find more interesting like posting to del.icio.us, emailing headlines and an interesting new ability to sort subscriptions by "attention." This means NetNewsWire can sort headlines according to statistics like how often they are opened, posted to del.icio.us and more. The overall performance and responsiveness of NetNewsWire has dramatically increased from a number of enhancements, one of the most notable being that it is now a Universal Binary.

The NetNewsWire beta is at 2.1b17 as of this writing, and it is a free upgrade for registered users. As far as I know, the free Newsgator account compatible with syncing is not available yet. One final word of caution if you decide to make the jump: back up your NetNewsWire support folder just in case something goes wrong. After all, it is a beta.

I played around with the beta on my PowerBook and must say: NetNewsWire has gotten a lot zippier. Things like marking large amounts of headlines (600-1000 or more) as read are much faster, and the UI has received some welcomed polish. Even with these updates, however, my newsreading still belongs to endo. At the end of the day though, it's great to see newsreading apps as a whole pushing the medium and offering useful features that get everyone's RSS feeds flowing.
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