FreeRange

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… So a day or two after my post announcing Viigo RSS Reader as the best free RSS Reader out there, I get an e-mail from Jon over at FreeRange notifying me the FreeRange RSS Reader for the Blackjack 2 has become completely free (it used to cost $25 a year).

I cross my fingers, hoping it would suck (so I didn’t have to write another post), and loaded it up onto my Blackjack 2. Much to my dismay it turned out to be a FANTASTIC RSS Reader beating Viigo as my favorite! (Viigo is still a great RSS Reader, but FreeRange is better)

Screenshots of fullscreen mode using Darkness Theme, Auto-Image-Download Disabled

Here’s what sets FreeRange apart from the crowd:

• It is free.
• The navigation is incredible intuitive. Its really easy to navigate through Feeds and their posts ONLY using the D-Pad .. No more soft-keys, or back buttons. The soft-keys are used for some advanced features, but I normally never leave the D-Pad.
• FreeRange loads full post text (essentially the web page the RSS post links to) in its own viewer/web browser which is very fast and very lightweight.
• Syncing RSS Feeds is very fast.
• RSS article titles wrap so I can read the entire title before going on to read the full article.
• FreeRange supports FULLSCREEN mode! I feel like my viewable area has almost doubled.
• You can search all your Feeds for keywords (I am looking for a new HDTV, so now i can search all my Deal RSS feeds for the term “hdtv” and it’ll list all the relevant articles — to bad it doesn’t make them any more affordable!)
• You can “Clip” articles. If you find an article that interests you, “clip” it which copies the article to a special “Clips” folder in FreeRange.  Pretty cool way to “remember” to read an article in full.
• FreeRange has an offline mode that lets you .. ok, I’m not even going to go into this. It’s pretty cool if frequently don’t have signal. (Planes, basement IT office, coal mines, etc.)
• Make your FreeRange account in the FreeRange client when you use it for the first time (ignore any warnings about limited use. Jon at FreeRange has assured me that FreeRange is free and fully functional).
• Manage your RSS Feeds using the Blackjack 2 client app or on www.FreeRangeInc.com’s web front end.

Viigo

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Viigo has become my favorite RSS reader for the Blackjack 2. I’ve hesitated to post a RSS reader because until I tried Viigo, I wasn’t entirely blown away. The stock Blackjack 2 RSS Reader is decent, but it’s a pain adding new feeds (no copy/paste on WM6). I tried out mDigger for awhile but something about it just seemed a little too clunky – I can’t put my finger on it.

I’ve been running Viigo for the past couple of days and am very pleased. Here’s what I really like about it:

• When reading the “full article”, Viigo opens the full article in a Pocket IE window IN the Viigo client. You don’t have to worry about going back and forth between RSS Reader and Browser … VERY, VERY Cool feature.
• Simple RSS feed administration via Web front end at Viigo.com
• Fast update of all RSS feeds
• Displays many headlines on a single screen
• Keeps track of read headlines

To use Viigo you’ll need to register and create an account with them (something you can actually do IN the Blackjack 2 client application!!) Using your account information, you can log in to Viigo’s Web front end, which is pretty plain, but allows you to manage easily your RSS feeds.