This private RSS feed issue has been driving me crazy. I’ve found a few work arounds .. including one that I posted in the private area of my blog but have since taken it down. Why? Here’s the deal .. say you translated the feed and then put it into your google reader. Well the service uses Yahoo Pipes to handle the authentication. So .. if I made a new post, then it could take hours for Yahoo Pipes to refresh, and then time for Google Reader to refresh .. well you’re looking at getting an RSS update like 6 hours after I make the post. Some people wouldn’t care .. but I sure do. I like my news fresh Also, if you converted my feed, and then plugged it into a reader like bloglines, which I read actually re-publishes the feeds you subscribe to through it, that would mean anybody could end up reading your feed anyways. Also, your private entries would be visible in search results .. which is what I’m trying to avoid. 

Then today on LifeHacker they had an article on boosting your RSS efficiency. Sweet! In there I found an article about NewsGator/NetNewsWire/FeedDemon. I visited their site 2 days ago when I was looking for ways to use HTTP Auth feeds, but honestly, I couldn’t find anything on their site. Especially because I didn’t know what I was looking for. When I went to their products page it had a listing of categories .. and well I thought they were product names for purchase and I really want something free. Thanks to the LifeHacker & Web Worker Daily articles I found out that their feed readers are actually free and where to find them. So I downloaded NetNewsWire (mac), created a News Gator account and downloaded the iPhone application and imported my RSS feeds from Google Reader. That part was simple .. everything loaded fine, all my feeds are in the same categories like in Google Reader and now .. I totally have access to the protected feed for my site. Supposedly all the applications will keep my feed subscription list in sync. Bonus, I even found the subscribe link for my toolbar (so handy if you stumble across something new you like).

Great .. fantastic  .. awesome .. 

Except .. there’s no iGoogle homepage widget for NewsGator yet My Google Reader widget is the #1 way I’m used to getting my feeds. When I open my browser or hit the home button, there they are just waiting for me to see if there’s anything new. So that sucks :\ I’m sure I could adapt to keeping NetNewsWire in my Dock .. but I really like the widget. Oh well. 

Also .. I’ve been searching for a way to read private bloggers feeds for years now .. and I still have no solutions to report. Basically if you set your blogger acct to private, your feed will no longer work. I’m sure its a security precaution .. I’ve learned that there is always a way to make an http auth feed public. 

Bottom line? If you have to get your private feed fix, try the News Gator applications, I’m going to stick with them for now. Also .. Blogger stinks, but I understand. And if some genius happens upon this silly little blog post, please invent some way to secure RSS feeds That is all.