When I first started downloading numerous RSS readers last Spring, I had the objective of finding the one optimal for my needs. The fact is, I never found such a beast. While I have used one reader more frequently than another, I noticed that as my feed subcriptions accumulated, I had to come up with a different method for consuming all of them.

Because I'm a freelance writer, my entire day consists of either consuming what other people have written or writing my own articles. While I don't subscribe to as many feeds as Robert Scoble (he claims 700 feeds daily!), there are some days where it feels that way.

The problem I've found, without fail, is that no matter which feed reader I've used, when my feed subscription list grows huge and unwieldy, it takes forever to do a multiple channels refresh. Sure, I could refresh one channel at a time, but that's actually a fair bit of wrist strain, especially if you're trying to consume a few hundred feeds.

What would be nice is if standalone feed readers updated channels in the background, sort of like the way standalone podcast clients like Juice/ IPodder or Democracy do. Although I'll admit that I've kept most of my evaluation to free RSS readers, and a few free trials of paid readers, so I may have missed such a reader.

But I've lived the last 10 years as a bootstrapper in pretty much everything I do technology-wise. So for the time being, what I do instead is employ 4-5 different readers, each having its own mostly unique feed subscription list - typically categorized by a theme relevant to me. This way, I can browse feeds in one reader while refreshing in another one, with little or no wait time.

>> Raj Kumar Dash, http://www.chameleonintegration.com/

Technorati Tags: rsscases, rss cases, web feeds, content syndication, rss readers