So far Gruml has been interesting as a desktop app, since it has a neat little menubar item, and a nice frontend to all the Google Reader content in one of my accounts. But using Gruml reminded me of the key navigation feature of Google Reader, especially since the feature is missing from both Gruml and NetNewsWire.
n/p in Google Reader moves forward/backward through headlines without opening items. This means I can devote a fair amount of real estate on feed item headlines and easily visually scan through the items. Then I can n/p my way to items of interests, pop them open, then pop them shut. For me, this works really well in processing large numbers of new items.
This headline navigation feature is what I’m really searching for to reach feed reading nirvana on the desktop.