Google Reader is one of our favorite ways to consume news, it's web-based, accessible on any computer and offers a variety of nice sharing, bookmarking and other features. However Reader is not without its drawbacks, including one very big one: it can't handle password-protected news feeds.
Google Reader isn't the only online feed reader that doesn't support password protected RSS and Atom feeds, which is why a new web service, FreeMyFeed was born. FreeMyFeed offers to handle the authenticated as an intermediary step so you can view your password protected feeds in any reader.
FreeMyFeed takes your username and password for a protected feed and then parses it and generates a new feed sans protection. From there all you need to do is add the new feed to Google Reader or whatever you favorite news feed service happens to be. Reportedly FreeMyFeed doesn't store any password info on the site, which means it probably encrypts your login and encodes it into the URL.
Of course you shouldn't go exposing protected feeds unless you're comfortable with that info being exposed to the web at large. Some protected feeds — like those offered by Gmail for tracking your inbox — are probably best left protected. But other times feeds are protected even though you might not want them to be — like your Twitter @reply feed — and that's when FreeMyFeed comes in handy.
FreeMyFeed is free and doesn't require any sign-up or other hoop jumping to use. Just plugin the feed URL, your username and password and you#8217;re done.
[via Lifehacker]
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