Times is an RSS reader for Mac OS X, but it isn't just that. Times brings the look of a newspaper right to your desktop. With a customizable layout that's easy to use, you can make your newspaper look exactly how you want it to. Acrylic, Times' developer, has taken their time creating something that looks great and is full featured. But most of all, it's easy to use.

Now, Let's get into Times' features. Times uses an easy drag and drop interface with popular RSS sites that you can choose from. There are three definitive sections in Times but adding more is always an option. You can also add your favorite website if you choose by simply clicking the add button(+) and typing an RSS supported URL. Also, there are different sections to choose from including the preset ones; World, Technology, Science,Entertainment, and Sports. Again, you are able to add, delete, rename, and move preset sections. There is also a desk that you can have pull up where you can store interesting articles for later viewing. The icon in the dock also bounces when new articles are available and also makes a notification sound. You can even use Times for your Twitter (I love Twitter)!

Times is a unique and innovative newsreader for Mac OS X Leopard. By rethinking the way you read news, we've engineered the best possible news experience straight from the ground up.

Instead of treating news like email (as most RSS readers do), Times presents you with headlines and photos from a variety of sources all in one place, letting you more easily discover the news you want to read. Like your own personal newspaper, you can put feeds into separate areas, create pages for different subjects, and more.

For a final judgement I give Times a 4 out of 5 because personally, I'm not a fan of the RSS reader and would rather go to the site itself. The reason I rated it so high is because of its beauty and simplicity. Times costs $30 and is available here.

Check out Acrylic's blog here.

Tweetie for Mac is one of the first native and clean Twitter clients for Mac OS X. Atebits has spent several months creating a very much anticipated (for me anyway) desktop client that brings beauty, functionality and simplicity into one package.

Features:

Tweetie does what all Twitter clients should, pull your Twitter updates, and does it well, but it does lack some key features that I would have liked to see. Tweetie has the ability to favorite tweets,but there is no way to un-favorite them or see tweets that were marked favorites on other clients such as the web, TweetDeck, Twhirl, or other popular applications. Another feature it is lacking is the ability to create groups. Groups allow you to only see specific peoples tweets. I wish I could have the ability to turn on auto-follow to increase my number of followers, but not have to see their tweets. Atebits has teamed up with yFrog, a popular image hosting service for Twitter, and now allows you to record videos and put them on yFrogs servers for everyone to see. Also, Tweetie has support for audible notices and text notices when you receive new Tweets.

Pros:

Tweetie has a small black box up in Mac OS X's status menu (near the clock and wi-fi indicator) that illuminates blue when new tweets, mentions (@replys), or Direct Messages are received. Also Tweetie includes a searchtool, a URL shortener, and a way to post images with a verity of setting to change and customize your favorite URL shortening service or picture hoster any way you'd like.Another thing that I like, which others may not, is that the "What are you doing" box is located in a separate window, allowing you to have as many thoughts forming to tweets as you'd like. Another upside to this is that you can compose your tweet without seeing the bulky window that is reserved for your friend's tweets.

Cons:

Tweeite is really nice but as I said before, it lacks features such as un-favoriting tweets and creating groups. Also a downside is that it costs $19 dollars. But cheer up, because there is a free version that you may use as long as you want, but it is ad-supported. While the ads are not annoying and disappear as time goes by, they are still there and take up room on the Timeline.

Final Rating:

I give Tweetie for Mac a solid 4 stars out of 5 rating because of its elegance and its ability to do the basics well. It also has some features that are important that I didn't talk about such as re-tweeting and small things like that.

Find Tweetie for Mac here

Find a sort demo here