Recommend me a new feed reader

I’m currently using an old version of NetNewsWire Lite; I stopped upgrading when the NewsGator thing happened, because I didn’t want a third-party service involved. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support Atom 1.0, has some UI glitches, and doesn't provide any nice way to notice when a feed is dead.

Requirements:

• Must support fully offline operation (and therefore must run entirely on my Mac).
  • Use case: I have no internet access and I want something to read.
  • Downloading embedded images is optional.
• Must be able to handle 500 feeds (mostly low-volume) and 2000 unread items (when I’m too busy to read for a while).
• Must support per-item read/unread states for “must not miss anything” feeds and “mark unread for later”-style use.
• Must support efficient scanning (e.g. spacebar for scroll down/next item, and not slow to respond). (This is another reason it needs to run locally; network/server latency for UI interaction is unacceptable.)
• Must support HTTP authentication with stored passwords for feeds.
• Per-feed (or per-feed-group) customizable polling frequency.

Nice things:

• Has an offline mode — ability to inhibit or stop downloading of feeds.
• Does not use a third-party server (no mandatory accounts or syncing).
• Remember unread items even if they have “scrolled off” the feed, for last-N-items feeds which generate more than N items more often than I read them.
• Does better than my current setup for handling the distinction between “must not miss anything” and “as time permits, feel free to skip” feeds.
• Has support for scraping and/or plain “has this site changed?” for sites without feeds. (There are web services to do this, which I am using occasionally; I'm talking about built-in functionality.)

(This list was written in a hurry; I may revise it as I think of additional requirements.)

Those that leave one Googly-eyed

One of the things I’ve been procrastinatingah, not had the time to do, being busy with school and other projects, is announcing and working on a job search for this summer. I have posted my resume, but I didn’t even get around to mentioning that. The process really doesn’t excite me that much — it’s essentially research, comparison shopping, which I have never been very fond of.

But, last October, I was contacted out of the blue by a recruiter asking if I was interested in opportunities at — Google. After checking that it wasn’t a spoof I naturally said yes, and after a number of rounds of information exchange and interviews,

This summer, I will be (well, subject to my completing the process of accepting the offer) working as a Software Engineering Intern at Google, with the Caja team, in Mountain View, CA.

So — whoa and yay and other such cheerful words. And thanks to my friends at Google who referred me and nudged the process along.^*

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The most uncertain remaining step is finding housing in or near Mountain View (could be as far as San Francisco or San Jose; Google runs a shuttle bus and is convenient to public transportation). Google has provided some general advice-for-interns, but I’d like to hear input from my readers and friends who already live in in the area.

Some parameters:

• I would consider living with other people, but I wouldn’t want to take a chance on a complete unknown. (So if you are someone or know someone with a room...)
• Speaking of taking chances, make the chance of being mugged on the way home in the evening very small, please.
• I am traveling from the east coast, probably by train, so I don’t want to have to transport a lot of stuff, or buy items that I’ll use for only three months — so a furnished space is better.
• I do not own a car, but I know how to drive one.
• I do not own a bicycle, but I used to know how to ride one.
• This will be the first time I have lived outside of my home city for longer than a week’s visit/vacation.

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^*Y’know how job search advice is big on saying you should be “networking”? If you’ve thought you’re too much of the non-face-to-face-social non-polite-small-talk would-rather-talk-to-people-through-the-computer sort for that — take me as an example. This opportunity came to me because of other people who knew me entirely through my work on open source projects (E, and thus Caja-CapTP) — I didn’t do anything that I wouldn’t have done for other reasons anyway. I’m not saying you shouldn't do any of the other stuff you might be thinking of — I’m saying this stuff counts.