mac.iLounge

One-click access to a list of content from your favorite web sites? That’s the promise—largely fulfilled—of Bloop’s Fresh Feed Pro ($2). As a lightweight RSS newsreader application, Fresh Feed Pro lives at the top of your screen near the clock, giving you a quick list of new article titles, introductions, and even photos to click on. Hit a “More” button and a second window pops up with additional details and a web page link. While it’s not perfect, the app provides a very clean RSS feed, and it works with Google Reader, too.

Fresh Feed Pro uses Google Reader to pull your list of preferred RSS feeds, but doesn’t sync back with it thereafter—quite possibly because the app is designed not as a full newsreader replacement, but as a way to quickly check whichever feeds you deem most important for its scrolling, truncated list. Simple customizations let you change the aforementioned “More” button to a direct web page link, eliminating the second window, as well as enabling a sound when fresh news is synced—as often as once per minute. The app can even leverage the Mac’s text-to-speech capabilities to read news titles to you as they hit the RSS feed, reducing your need to keep checking the list. It’s clear that Bloop is still working on expanding the app’s functionality and fixing bugs, but for the time being, Fresh Feed Pro is a nice little app for the price, and available via the Mac App Store.