Like many (or most) of you reading this I get a ton of information from my RSS feeds. Since I use a notebook and a desktop, an iPhone and an iPod touch I don’t just need a decent RSS reader… I need a SYSTEM. I need something that allows me to use them all interchangeably with one device able to update the information on ALL the devices.

Until now, however, there didn’t seem to be the right system. I’m happy to say that all that changed last week when I started to use EventBox.

Let me go back a bit…

I used Google Reader for the longest time. I like it a lot and was even happier with it when iPhone apps like Byline and Feeds came out and synced with my account. Now anything read on one device was marked as read on all of them. The iPhone apps were great! I especially liked Feeds which evolved into a fast, powerful RSS reader that was easy to use. Over time, however, I grew tired of Google Reader being browser-based. Sure, I could use Google Gears to go off line but the whole experience started to annoy me.

Eventually I moved to NetNewsWire.  It offered both a free Mac client and a free iPhone app. Better still, the two were always in sync. Perfect, right? Nope. As good as the desktop software was the iPhone app barely changed over the year it has been out. It works well enough but is limited compared to the functionality other iPhone RSS apps now include such as integration with Instapaper, ReadItLater and more.

So here I was… Google Reader was great through the iPhone app but the desktop experience was meh. NetNewsWire offered a great desktop app but the iPhone app was anemic. Each system offered HALF of what I needed. That, unfortunately, meant I didn’t have a system.

That changed when I tried The Cosmic Machine’s EventBox.

Event Box is one of the growing number of Mac applications that bring numerous social networking sites together in one place. Many of these all-in-one applications try to do too much and end up being, at best, cumbersome. That isn’t my experience with EventBox.

They describe it this way…

Do you use many social services? Annoyed that you have to run 6 different applications? Enter the new revolutionary social app, EventBox. All your services in one place, integrated.
When you are busy doing your work, you don’t want anything to disrupt your focus. But you still want to read that message which just came in. This is where the HUD window comes in handy.

EventBox already integrates with a numer of services and more are being added all the time.

But while the integration with services like Facebook and Twitter are nice what sold me on EventBox was the way it integrates with Google Reader. It does for Google Reader on a Mac what apps like Feeds and Byline do for the iPhone… makes checking the news SIMPLE!

EventBox syncs quickly, recreates all my folders, lets me star, flag, share, Tweet or email a post. I can preview posts while I scroll through or toggle off the preview and just see the first lines of text.

The HeadsUpDisplay is great if you want to get updates without having to open the window (I don’t use it personally) and the degree of configurability is tremendous. The ability to scroll through hundreds of new posts using only the keyboard is a huge advantage.

Best of all the application is rapidly maturing and updates are frequent.EventBox is currently $15 but the price will increase to $20 when it comes out of Beta.

You can try/buy it HERE.

Related posts:

1. RealMac Buys EventBox… Renames It Socialite
2. Google Reader-Synching NetNewsWire For iPhone On The Way
3. iGoogle For iPhone and Android Is Back, Better Than Ever!
4. Monitor – A Gear Diary Video QuickView
5. NetNewsWire With Google Reader Sync Now Available