If you’re a Google Chrome user, you might find some of its features annoying or more than whats actually needed. To solve this very issue, developers of Minimalist Gmail and Minimalist Google Calendar have come up with another sibling in the form of Minimalist Google Reader. And as the name sounds, this Google Chrome extension is a step forward from the basic Google Reader, making it customizable and enjoyable to use.

You may get rid off unnecessary links to save space, especially if you’re using a compact device, and hide/show the header, change background colors etc. This extension is free and is compatible with Google Chrome, so if you use Google Chrome, it shouldn’t be much of a problem. This is a must have extension for all the Chrome users, you may download the extension here.

Via: LifeHacker

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But was this the best thing to do? I most certainly think that one needs to pay attention to certain the conditions which played a major role in causing this shift. But before we find out the reason for this sudden shift, let me give you some insight over the new features of Feed Demon 3.0

I mentioned in FeedDemon 3.0 features review that if you are still using Feed Demon 2.7 this requires an upgrade to Feed Demon
3.0 to update and read your new feeds.

To find out what exactly happened during the transition towards version 3.0, you can read what our friends from TidBITS had to say about this.

But nonetheless the sudden change initially, seemed to cause a lot of irritation amongst its user base. But we all have to understand that while dealing with the internet, change is the name of the game and we have to be flexible in dealing with situations and economic realities. Providing a free service for a long time might not have been the most feasible thing to do.

FeedDemon 3.0 now runs ads at the bottom left of your screen.

There have been unhappy users reporting; for those who have used the paid version in the past, the new 3.0 version doesn’t offer any significant improvement over 2.7. The social media integration capabilities comes as a boon but the fact that it runs ads actually makes it worse.

My question is: Given all of this, why use FeedDemon 3.0? Why not just use Google Reader?

The answer that i can think of is fairly simple. There are many users who like the ability to read their feeds offline. This is FeedDemon’s biggest advantage. And while reading offline, the small ad at the bottom of the page is actually unobtrusive.

For those of you concerned about or were unaware of this development you can also read the News Gator FAQ for more info.

Feed Demon 3.0 is a free download for Windows systems only.

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If you are still using Feed Demon 2.7 this requires an upgrade to Feed Demon 3.0 to update and read your new feeds.

If you are not sure why you need this Version 3.0 upgrade or prefer to use Google Reader, read This!

FeedDemon 3.0 packs some new features:

Google Reader:

Google Reader is the world’s most popular web-based RSS application. One of the most popular feature requests from Feed Demon and NetNewsWire users was synchronization with Google Reader.

New integration between Google Reader and FeedDemon has enabled automatic syncing of your feeds, shared items and item tags with Google Reader. This implies that if you tag or ‘quick tag’ icons of any feed item or attach a text note within Google Reader, it appears in your Feed Demon as well. Also now if you read any feed in Google Reader, it will get marked as “read” in FeedDemon and vice versa.

Twitter Integration:

Now with new seamless Twitter integration you could actually use FeedDemon 3 as your twitter client. It has now support for short URLs. It now has intelligent hyperlinks. FeedDemon, will now automatically find Twitter usernames, web URLs as well as #hashtags present within a tweet and convert them into hyperlinks.

Feed Demon 3 has several features such as support for subscribing to your Twitter Timeline, Search Twitter from Feed Demon amongst others. You can also reply to tweets from within Feed Demon 3.0 using the twitter reply button.

But despite these new features many users seem to prefer Tweet Deck over Feed Demon’s new Twitter Integration. While some have welcomed these features, especially Intelligent hyperlinks, they feel it could slow down the post speed. But, It remains to be seen if this theory is true. But now you have an option to use FeedDemon as your twitter client.

Other Features:

1. It has a redesigned UI including new “Subscriptions Home” page with popular videos and articles extracted from your feeds.

2. It supports easy item sharing – allows to share the articles with others with just one click.

For a complete list of features and changes present in this new upgrade you can check the release notes at Bradsoft.com

Feed Demon 3.0 is a free download for Windows systems only.

Note: If you have a previous version of FeedDemon installed, you can just install this version directly on top of it.

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This article, FeedDemon 3.0 Now Packs More Features!, was published at TechBuzz. Please don't violate our copyright