On this delicious three day weekend (I love three day weekends), what would be more fun than a new version of FeedDemon.  (Ok, I can think of a couple of things, but I’m the only one awake in my house at this point.) 

I’ve been a rabid FeedDemon user for several years.  I’ve tried every reader combination I could think of (web and desktop) and the FeedBurner / NewsGator Online combination is the way I deal with the 800+ feeds I read daily.  Nick Bradbury is an artist when it comes to crafting Windows-based software.  FeedDemon is his current work of art.

While FeedDemon has a pile of new features, Nick has his top five:

1. Synchronized news bins with shared RSS feeds – share a FeedDemon “news bin” (similar to a link blog) as an RSS feed so that others may subscribe to it. Simply copy a post from any feed into a shared news bin, and everyone subscribed to that news bin’s feed will get a copy of it. You can also drag-and-drop FeedDemon browser tabs – or even hyperlinks from an external browser – into a news bin to share those links.
2. Vastly improved offline support – including the ability to prefetch links and images in all unread items for offline reading.
3. Completely rewritten “Popular Topics” – view the most popular topics in all the feeds you’re subscribed to, alongside the topics that are popular with all NewsGator subscribers.
4. Embedded video support – video objects embedded in feed items can now be securely viewed inside FeedDemon.
5. “Who’s linking here?” – with a single click, find out who in the blogosphere is linking to a specific post in your subscriptions.

#2 – the offline support – is awesome.  Given all my travel I often read my feeds offline on an airplane when my brain is tired – now I get the whole feed including links and images. 

Great job Nick – again.  Gotta go – Amy just woke up.