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The folks over at NewsGator have seemingly given up on consumer news feed syncing and have ceded to the superiority of Google Reader.

First it was NewsGator’s Windows syncing feed reader Feed Demon that got the switch from NewsGator syncing to Google Reader syncing. Now its the Mac client’s turn and the esteemed reader NetNewsWire has now switched syncing services too. Yeterday’s announcement by NewsGator states that its will be taking its NewsGator Online news feed reading and syncing service offline by the end of August. This leaves little time for NetNewsWire to fast track a stable switch to Google Reader syncing, but yesterday the first public beta of NetNewsWire 3.2 was made available.

There are a few differences between how NewsGator and Google Reader do their syncing. Notably Google Reader does not support folders within folders, which poses a problem for people who have organized their feeds in such a way. ‘Flagged’ items in NetNewsWire get transplanted as ‘Starred’ items in Google Reader, but the ’shared’ and ‘liked’ features are not supported yet.

Beyond the big change of where feeds are synced to, the new version supports sending articles to InstaPaper, sports a fancy new icon and has had a general code cleanup to boot. Being able to sync to NewsGator is not even an option anymore (due to NewsGator stopping their service) and neither is the previously available alternative option of syncing to .Mac or an FTP site. The Clippings functionality is also currently missing in action; they haven’t been deleted, but there is no way to access them.

Not all users are happy with the new beta, as can been seen on the NetNewsWire forum. NetNewsWire was originally a paid application, which was then turned into a free application by NewsGator. The new beta contains a relatively large ad embedded in the bottom left of the window. In the future, this can be turned off with a yet unannounced payment system of some sort, which of course has some people up in arms. While one can usually say “just stick with the existing version” this won’t apply beyond August when NewsGator shuts off its sync servers. But for a syncing service without any monthly fees, you’re always taking this risk. Personally, I’m happy to switch to Google Reader and can cope with ads. Developers need income too!

An updated version of NetNewsWires for the iPhone/iPod touch is also in the works that will support Google Reader syncing. The release date for this is currently unknown. For those that are interested, you can follow the progress of the new betas at nnwbeta.com and even follow the developer’s twitter account recounting the coding work.

Have you ever wanted to copy or convert your personal collection of DVDs for backup or easy viewing on your Apple TV, only to be thwarted by CSS encryption? I feel your pain, and so do the good folks at Metakine. Lucky for us, Fairmount is here to help, and it’s free!

CSS, or Content Scramble System, is an approach used by most DVD manufacturers as a way to prevent unauthorized copies and unlicensed playback of DVD content. Unfortunately for consumers, this kind of digital rights management can be cumbersome for those who want to take advantage of their fair use rights. Fairmount makes setting aside this type of DRM extremely easy.

Fairmount works together with the VLC Media Player to decrypt your mounted DVD and replace it with a unencrypted disk image. It’s really simple to do. With a DVD mounted, just launch the Fairmount application and it will automatically and transparently hand off the decryption to VLC and then begin mounting a new decrypted image of the disk.

Once the DVD is decrypted, and the new disk image is mounted, you can then save the video files on to your network, convert them for playback on other devices, or burn the image back to a disk. The decryption is very fast and the exchange with VLC happens completely in the background. You even get a nice animation as the mounted DVD is smeared over with cream cheese, “Bagels are good!”

If you’re planning on burning the image to DVD, the Fairmount download comes bundled with another application from Metakine called DVDRemaster which will let you do just that. If you’re just interested in converting files for viewing on your Apple TV, iPhone, or iPod, I’d like to take this opportunity to recommend an excellent and free application called HandBrake.

Fairmount, VLC, and HandBrake are all free applications released under a General Public License. DVDRemaster is available in both standard and pro versions for $39.99 and $49.99, respectively.