An alternative to NetNewsWire – Vienna
This idea and conversation came out of talking on Tweeter. As most of you know Net NewsWire is not going to support News Gator feeds after August. They put out a new version of Net News Wire but it broke clippings and other things for many users who were not amused. This got me to looking at some alternatives as a fun exercise and something I do because … well cause I’m a geek that’s why.
I went hunting for a new RSS reader and today tried a couple. NewFire seemed buggy to me and it crashed about 5 times, before I gave up. Then @Cadconow and @amrosario on Twitter suggested Vienna a freeware RSS reader. It is a lot simpler and not as feature rich as Net
In trying it @amrosario and I recognized that it did not have sync capabilities. So I suggested that we use Dropbox (link will help support this web page too) to sync the Vienna database to two macs. Both @amrosario and I tried it and it works to sync between two Macs. It may not be the ultimate solution to replace Net NewsWire , but it’s worth a try,
Here are the quick and dirty steps
1. TheVienna database that keeps track of your subscriptions is located in your home folder at
\yourhomefolder\Library\Application Support\Vienna\messages.db
2. Copy the messages.db file into your Dropbox (if you don’t have one go here Dropbox) . As an alternative you could copy the entire \Vienna folder .
3. Make the Symbolic Link: Get something like SymbolicLinker 1.3v2 (or use any other method), to make a symbolic link of that “messages.db” file or the entire Vienna folder if you did this (either should work)
You will need to steps 4 and 5 on both of the Macs (or more than two , that you want to sync with).
4. Put the newly created symbolic link in back where it came from.
\yourhomefolder\Library\Application Support\Vienna\messages.db
5. Remove the word synlink from the name of the new message.db symlink
6. For iPhone sync I can use ByLine for iPhone with Google reader.
That’s it, should now open Vienna and it should work and sync between computers. Give it a try and I hope it works for you too.
Victor,
Agree that NNW has made a lot of missteps with their migration to Google Reader. I am holding on hoping that they will fix some of the issues, especially with respect to clippings. I will give them a couple of months – if not fixed, then ciao!
Comment by pierrebou — August 2, 2009 @ 4:24 pm
NetNewsWire released a new beta today and clippings are back. Though they don't yet sync, but they will be working to implement that.
Now the only thing I have lost in NetNewsWire is subfolders of folders since Google Reader doesn't support it. This is annoying since I made use of subfolders, but still NetNewsWire is still the best reader around – just not as good as it was.
Oh and one of the things I love about Path FInder is how easy it is to create symbolic links which I use all the time to sync multiple Macs via dropbox.
Comment by curtjester — August 3, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
Really good to know. I agree about subfolders for sure. Maybe Google will start. My point mostly was to show the power of Symbl link
Comment by typicalmacuser — August 3, 2009 @ 5:06 pm
Have you tried using an application called Times? I have used it a few times and it reads just like a newspaper. It is very customizable for the user to make their own and how they want to digest the news of the day. Here is the link to the developer's website:
http://www.acrylicapps.com/times
Comment by trucklover — August 6, 2009 @ 10:22 am
No but I sure will check it out. Thanks
Comment by typicalmacuser — August 6, 2009 @ 3:57 pm
There's a real opening here for a newsreader that syncs via MobileMe iDisk/WebDAV.
Comment by Anthony — September 4, 2009 @ 4:49 am
Wow thanks, 2 years that's a long time and I do appreciate it.
Comment by typicalmacuser — October 8, 2009 @ 11:53 pm
Wow thanks, 2 years that’s a long time and I do appreciate it.
Comment by Anonymous — October 9, 2009 @ 6:53 am