Many have additional features that I don’t use (tagging, quick blogging, sharing via social networks, saving/pinning/favoriting articles, etc.) so I won’t go into every app’s feature list. With that, here are quick reviews for some of the iPad RSS readers I’ve tried:

Flipboard

One of the most-hyped readers, Flipboard displays RSS feeds in a magazine-like layout. While not really an RSS reader by definition, I had to try it anyway. It’s cool (with page-turning UI), is well-done, and if your feeds regularly have good photography you end up with a very nice-looking “magazine.” While I find Flipboard nice to look at, I find that I tend to flip though it (much like a magazine) which doesn’t let me take in a lot of feeds quickly. It does sync with Google Reader, but going through them in Flipboard is tedious. If you just have a few RSS feeds and like the magazine format, Flipboard might be for you.

FLUD and Pulse News

Flud (free) and Pulse (free) both display your feeds in a boxed format: categories run across the top, your feeds for that category are displayed horizontally (with photo, if available). While neither sync with Google Reader both apps can add feeds from your Reader account, but only Pulse lets you save items to Instapaper.

Like Flipboard, these seem to work better if you have fewer feeds to follow. Despite their similarity, I give the edge to Pulse: it’s a little easier to browse a feed while viewing an article (it allows you to see two items in the sidebar vs. Flud’s one) plus it supports Instapaper. But for what I want in a feed reader, I end up doing too much tapping with both Flud and Pulse to keep up with my feeds.

Feeddler

Feeddler (free; a $4.99 pro version is ad-free) requires Google Reader and is a more standard RSS reader: after logging in, you see a list of your categories on the left and the latest items on the right. Tap a category to drill down and view the feed; tap a headline to view the summary. It’s basic but gets the job done. Feeddler would be my RSS app of choice if not for one minor but important thing: it’s a bit hard to quickly read through a feed since tapping a headline opens the article in an overlay window. You then have to either close it before selecting another article, or simply go to the next or previous article — jumping around can’t be done quickly. (The free version also lacks Instapaper support, but the pro version has it.)

Reeder

Reeder ($4.99) opens with a somewhat strange screen of category boxes. You then either tap the category box to view the all items of the category’s feeds, or pinch & zoom to view and select the individual feeds in the category. It’s kind of a neat UI, but I think a more standard menu selection (like Feeddler’s) would be easier and quicker. However, once you’re viewing a category or feed, it’s great: article headlines & short summary are displayed along the left column, which you tap to display in the main section. You can tap the article headline to view the web page, or save to Instapaper (or other service). And you can easily browse headlines and still keep the article visible.

The Feed

The Feed (free) is a somewhat strange reader (to me). Folders are somewhat hidden and are accessed by tapping the Feed icon in the bottom left, horizontal-scrolling and selecting the folder you want, then the feed you want. Articles are then displayed in large gray boxes (which can be zoomed out to view more at a time). By not showing just the headlines, however, you have to do a lot more scrolling. Again, this app might work better for a small number of feeds, but this was my least favorite.

My Pick

If you’re like me and follow a lot of RSS feeds and want to be able to quickly scan, read and save articles, I recommend Reeder. You can scan your feeds (singular or by category) quickly without having to open and close windows or be forced to use just previous/next navigation. If you’re more interested in a UI and layout more fitting of your cool iPad, definitely try Flipboard. But for filtering, reading and saving a lot of information as quickly as possible, Reeder is the way to go for me.

Update: Daring Fireball linked to an improved version that’s a little more legible: iPad View Source Bookmarklet

Enter PNG Thing for Mac. Running your Photoshop-generated PNGs through PNG Thing reduces their size: just drag your images onto PNG Thing and strips out unnecessary junk, making your PNGs smaller. (It does a better job on large files and doesn’t make much of a dent with smaller PNGs.)

Dave Shea says Fireworks does an even better job of reducing PNGs. But if you don’t have Fireworks handy, PNG Thing is a nice (free) way to go.

Sample search at search3.com

What if your site isn’t showing up in search results? Or you don’t like the text that Google is displaying to describe your site? I’ll be covering these topics in future blog posts; if your needs are more pressing, please feel free to contact me today.

As a developer, one of the biggest challenges with testing across browsers is Internet Explorer: some of your visitors will have the most recent version (currently IE8) but there are still a lot of people who haven’t upgraded and are still looking at your site with IE7, and even (horrors!) IE6.

Since Microsoft only lets you run a single version of IE on your Windows machine at a time, this can be a challenge. Enter Internet Explorer Collection: It contains multiple IE versions which are standalone so they can be used at the same time, making it easy to see how your site appears across different versions of IE. (You probably won’t like how IE6 treats your code…)

I’ve been using Harvest successfully for the past year. Setup is fast and tracking your time is easy using the website, desktop widget, or iPhone app. Creating and sending invoices is very easy with their wizard-like interface, and you can add your company logo to the invoices it creates (that’s about the extent of the customization, though). Keeping track of time spent and expenses for projects, and sending and tracking invoices is probably the least fun part of creative work. But at least Harvest makes it quick and easy to do you can spend most of your time actually working. With a free trial available, it’s worth a test-drive.

For a more in-depth look, check out Simple Station’s comparison of Freshbooks, Harvest and Blinksale. Harvest comes away with their recommendation:

We highly recommend Harvest and are now using it as an integral part of our work flow, invoicing, time tracking and project management.