I've recently been examining my RSS situation, having been an Apple Mail user for the better part of two years. I recently started experimenting with NetNewsWire after discovering that I was able to read my feeds on my iPhone and on the web.
However, I've recently discovered a reader that has since piqued my interest:
I've read online reviews and watched the demo video, but it's hard to get a sense of whether or not Fever will mesh with the way I like to read news. So I have a few questions:
What's the difference between "kindling" and "sparks"? The description on the page is somewhat unhelpful:
Essential, must-read feeds are Kindling. Supplemental, low signal-to-noise feeds are Sparks. Sparks ignite Kindling raising the temperature of items and links that should not be missed.
I get the tempreature metaphor, I just don't get how sparks "ignite" the kinding, or what kinds of feeds are better for kindling vs sparks
The RSS readers that I've liked have treated feeds like email and list all my undread items in one pane so that when I click on one it gets displayed in another pane. I suspect that I prefer this method to Google Reader because it allows me to have greater control over what is marked as read vs unread, as well as being able to easily skim the titles to see if there's anything that immediately piques my interest.
I know Fever is designed to try to float the most interesting/relevant news to the top, and I'm wondering how well it really works in practice. I'm also wondering how easy it is to mark items as read/unread.
How well does the iPhone client/Fluid client work, and how do they compare with NetNewsWire for the Mac and iPhone?
Does the temperature actually mean anything, other than to serve as a way to sort the feeds? Is it fun/intuitive or does it get in the way?