A Trial Run

I’m giving Bloglines a try. I know, I’m one of the last people to do it, but it feels like the end of an era. Having blogged for over five years, feed readers still seem new to me, and I like being forced to click around and notice new comments, etc. But efficiency led me to give it a spin. We’ll see.

9 responses to “A Trial Run

  1. Wait! I was a bloglines fan until I discovered Google Reader, which I think is designed soooo much better than bloglines. You can see an overview here: http://www.google.com/reader/things/tour. I think you may have to have a gmail address to sign up, but gmail is beyond fantastic, too. :)

    I agree that a feed reader has it’s good and bad points, but I like that I now tend to click over and read the comments, or add a comment, only for the posts that I’m really interested in.

  2. Mike uses google reader, I just haven’t been thrilled.

  3. Nathan and I both use Google reader (mostly because if I didn’t use a feed reader, I’d never get around to those blogs I love to read) and we really like it. I don’t know a thing about Bloglines, but I really like the Google reader.

  4. Let’s try that link again: http://www.google.com/reader/things/tour

    You can also find the link here, about halfway down the page: http://labs.google.com/

  5. You aren’t the last… ;)

  6. I’ve used Bloglines and Google Reader, and have settled on Bloglines solely due to its digest format. In bloglines, I compile blogs I read into various folders (called labels in Google Reader), so if I’m in a hurry I can just read the cool people’s stuff really quickly. In bloglines, I just click a folder, and it compiles all the latest posts of all the blogs in that folder into one easy-to-read digest.

    However, in Google Reader, it forces you to read one post at a time, and then click manually to the next post. I’ve looked around to see if digests are possible in Reader, but I just haven’t been able to find it, which makes it far less efficient for me. I like being able to scroll quickly up and down all the latest posts, which Bloglines is great for.

    However, with feeds you do miss out on a lot of comments and such. There are comment feeds in WP etc., but they are a pain to add. I wish the aggregators would automatically sniff out comments, optionally just for posts I say I want to follow.

  7. Josh’s reason is exactly why I went with Bloglines. I have my feeds organized in folders by “rank” that I read digest style so when I only have a second I can check those I would have clicked to first.

    I do prefer the minimalist, simple styling of Google Reader aesthetically, but the function of Bloglines works better for me.

  8. no, no, no. . . I know it would be a good idea to use feeds, but nooooooo. . . I just can’t bring myself to do so.

  9. I’m still out of the loop, too…

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