If you are a pro user of Google Reader for getting the updates thru feeds of your favorite blogs/sites then here is a desktop client based on Adobe AIR to make your life bit easier. Sometimes you may feel that you don’t want to open the browser and login with your ID and password to get the updates then you can do that with this tiny application named “ReadAir”.
ReadAir is an Adobe AIR based desktop client to show you your subscribed feed’s updates. It takes the Google Reader API to get the data and show them on a readable format. Of course you need to enter your email ID and Password to access your subscribed updates. You may set the application to remember your ID and Password so that you don’t need to enter them all time. Here I will show you the look and how to use part for this application.
Installation of ReadAir Desktop Client
1. To install ReadAir on your desktop, your system should have Adobe AIR installed. If you are already using any other Adobe AIR based application like TweetDeck, Twhirl etc. then no need to install AIR again. Otherwise you can install Adobe AIR from the link provided below:
Download Adobe AIR (15.12 MB)
2. Install Adobe AIR on your system.
3. Download ReadAir and start the installation
4. Save the shortcut on desktop for easy access.
How To use ReadAir
Using ReadAir is a very simple process as it is just going to show you your subscribed feeds. You will see he folders created on your Google Reader account for proper management of feeds. Click on the Feed Title on the lest panel to see the updates from that blog or site. Or you can click on All Items to show updates from each feed.
I had already shared the importable document having the subscription link for more than 50 nice blogs and sites. You can import them in your Google Reader account and then use ReadAir to get/read the updates from those sites.
Login Window
ReadAir Panel
You can change the look of ReadAir from the Preference panel. To access the Preference panel or ReadAir, Right Click on the ReadAir Icon appearing in the “System Tray” and select “Preference” from there. Once you will click on that, a preference panel will open where you can change the look, data access time/frequency and Account Information.
Limitations
ReadAir is getting data thru Reader API and show them on Adobe AIR platform. The limitation over here is that, you can’t add subscription directly thru ReadAir application like you do in Google Reader. You can’t change the feed management like folder creation and change, from this tool as well. It is just for reading the updates.