The folks over at NewsGator sure are busy, er, gators these days. When last we heard from the makers of news reader NetNewsWire, they were offing their own online news reader service in favor of syncing with Google Reader; the change, which came in a beta version of NetNewsWire 3.2, rubbed some the wrong way. Now the company has released both the final version of 3.2 as well as a new 2.0 iteration of its companion iPhone app.
In addition to the new Google Reader syncing features, the final version of NetNewsWire 3.2 fixes a number of bugs and adds other features, such as support for Web service Instapaper and the ability to easily create Twitter search feeds. Articles that are flagged in NetNewsWire now sync with starred items in Google Reader and vice versa, and the final version has returned the earlier version’s suppot for both nested folders and clippings (though the latter doesn’t sync yet).
NetNewsWire has also once again returned to being a paid product. You can download and use it for free, but it will display a small ad in the bottom left corner (a mere 90 pixels tall!). If you want to banish the ad forever, it will cost you $10. Speaking as someone who owned an earlier version of NetNewsWire back when it cost $30, I can easily say it’s worth the price—I slapped down my cash immediately. The software requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
At the same time, NewsGator also released an update to the iPhone version of NetNewsWire. The new 2.0 release comes in two flavors: standard and premium. As with the desktop version, you can download the standard version for free if you don’t mind putting up with a small ad, or pay the $2 ($5 beginning in October) for the premium version and read your news ad-free.
Otherwise, the two are basically the same app, which has been largely reworked since version 1.0, released back in July of 2008. The update sports much faster performance, a new interface, and new features like the ability to collapse and expand folders of feeds, send items to Instapaper or Twitter, star and view starred items, and more. NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.