By Staff Writer – John Federico (@gadgetboy)

I’ve rekindled an old flame. (Not that kind of old flame. I’m married…)

Thanks to Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb, I’ve rediscovered an application that I had to leave behind when I switched from Firefox – it’s called Feedly and makes reading RSS feeds pure pleasure.

Unlike Google Reader, which is a web application or NetNewsWire, a desktop application, Feedly takes an approach that is somewhere in the middle. At it’s inception it was installed as a Firefox add-on but is now available as a Chrome Extension on Mac/Windows/Linux.

Why is it so great?

It transforms feed reading from a “folders and lists” experience to one that is more like a personalized web site created just for you. More importantly, it syncs with your Google Reader account so that you can continue to use whatever interface you like on your iPhone, BlackBerry, etc. Or, should you tire of Feedly (I didn’t – I grew tired of Firefox on the Mac) you can easily switch back to Google Reader without any switching costs.

Cover

This view provides you with an overview of items in your feeds based on your reading history, freshness and so on.

Dashboard

This view lets you manage your feeds right from within feedly. Feedly syncs your subscription changes with Google Reader.

Latest

Exactly what it sounds like – the latest updates to your feeds organized in reverse chronological order.

Folders

It’s not called folders, but in the left navigation feedly provides a list of your Google folders which allows you view an aggregated group of items or individual feeds.

Shared Items

Your Google Reader Shared Items.

Saved Items

These are your Google Reader Starred Items.

Explore

Exploration is a common theme in feedly. Feedly recommends other content sources you might like in the right column either as specific feeds or category groupings. In this image feedly is showing the contents of the Explore menu from Google Reader.

Karma

This is a Twitter related view showing you links you’ve posted and the number of retweets on that item.

Comments

This view shows the items on which you’ve commented in Google Reader.

Recently Read

Like it sounds: items that you’ve recently read.

Feedly runs blazingly fast in the nightly builds of Chromium for Mac which are nowhere near ready for release. I can only imagine that the experience will get better as we grow nearer to the final release of Chrome for Mac. I haven’t tested feedly on Windows or Linux but I would imagine that the speed is typical of Chrome.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Tags: feedly , feedly for Google Chrome , Firefox Add-ons , Google Chrome Extensions , google reader , NetNewsWire , Read RSS Feeds