Omea. Thanks to everyone who plugged it in the comments last night. Not only can it handle a huge number of feeds without choking, not only is the frequency of updates customizable, not only can you view all new posts by category instead of by individual feed, but it adds a nifty little site-specific icon next to each headline that helps you distinguish at a glance which new articles are from which news sources. That’s surprisingly helpful if, like me, you’ve got a mixture of hard news and pure crap floating around in your folders. The only drawbacks: it’s a standalone app, not browser-based, so I need to install it separately on all the computers I use and update the OPML file on each one every time I subscribe to a new feed. It’s also, inexplicably, a bit erratic thus far on updating regularly. Sometimes it spiders my feeds for new posts every 15 minutes as I’ve asked it to do, other times it just “forgets.” There must be a way to fix that. Minus those quirks, I’d pronounce it the Malkin of newsreaders; as it is, sublime but mildly flawed, I pronounce it the KP of newsreaders. Still waiting to give NetVibes a good test run per the other consistent recommendation in the comments last night, but that looks to be more of a start page where news reading is just a side attraction amid a lot of other stuff. For hardcore news junkies, you’re probably better off with Omea.

Since last night’s thread was so helpful, feel free to treat this as an open thread to recommend other useful apps you’ve come across lately. Newsy stuff is preferred but not required.