Unobtrusive news aggregation

Hardcore information junkies need more than tweets and Facebook posts to get a fix. They need a steady stream of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, too, ideally without a bunch of extra clutter. Fresh Feed Pro is a compact RSS reader that fits comfortably on your Desktop, although it doesn’t do much more than deliver the latest news.

Adding RSS feeds to your source list is easy -- if you’re coming from Google Reader. Those subscriptions are automatically imported by entering your Google info. That rocks, but for other feeds, you have to enter the URLs manually or drag them from your browser’s address bar to Fresh Feed Pro’s Dock icon. Dragging is more convenient -- except that all other interaction with the app occurs in its menu bar icon. But once feeds are added, they can be turned on or off as your interests change, and you can set how often feeds update and how many headlines display at once. Unfortunately, you can’t update feeds manually -- a frustrating omission.

More than just a pretty face, Fresh Feed Pro can chime and read the news at each update.

Fresh Feed Pro’s menu bar icon shows a scrollable list of your headlines. Clicking one previews the article in a floating window. From there, you can share the article on Twitter or Facebook, or click again to launch the story in your browser (you can also set stories to skip the preview and launch directly). But all the headlines look alike, so it’s tricky to quickly find news from the sites you’re most interested in. We wish there were larger favicons to help tell things apart.

The bottom line. Fresh Feed Pro does the job, but RSS diehards will be better served by a beefier reader. The merely RSS-curious looking to conserve screen real estate may be fine with Fresh Feed’s free offering, which lacks Google Reader support, the preview window, and social networking features.