I use Bloglines to read my two-hundred-and-something feeds and I like it pretty good, in spite of the lurking fear that they are looking for a way to cash in on me.
My respect for them really increased when they published this letter to Congress about FEC regulation of blogs last month, and today they rolled out a few small improvements that make Bloglines even easier to use. Just in time, considering Google is trying to give them a run for the money. I’ve tried Google’s new aggregator, and I found that it just doesn’t work as well although it’s certainly prettier than Bloglines. I’m not switching yet, but it’s always good to have options.
We the Bloggers…
Blogs have given individuals of any and every background the ability to freely speak their minds and share information with anyone who chooses to read it, at any time they wish to do so. Bloglines was created for people as a window to access this world of dynamic content and a way to participate in its creation. We believe blogs have helped enable an open exchange of information that has never before been possible. As some of you may have heard, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is reviewing its regulations concerning political speech on the Internet, including blog activity. Bloglines is committed to the continuation of open exchanges of information and opinions throughout the blogosphere and the Internet in general. Today, the Committee on House Administration is having a hearing on this issue. In the spirit of these beliefs, I have provided the Committee with the following statement. We encourage you to express your opinion on this matter in any forum you choose.
-Mark Fletcher and the Bloglines team
The fact is that blogs and websites will have to be regulated just like other campaign speech and spending, but first Congress needs to get a clue about the Internet!
Bloglines’ excellent politics aside, I recently switched from Bloglines to Mozilla Thunderbird for feed-readin’. There have been ups and downs, but I’m going to stay with Thunderbird mainly because of the long period of time between when a new feed entry is posted and when it actually shows up on Bloglines. It’s typical with Bloglines to click through on a new entry to find that a post on a popular site already has 40-80 comments; now I’m there early and much more likely to participate in the comment-conversation.
I know this doesn’t go at all to your point about Bloglines, but this is the closest I think I’ll come to an opportune moment to mention my conversion. 🙂
I’m not sure if I would describe Bloglines’ politics as “excellent,” but I’m glad they have some at all.
My problem with using a computer-based aggregator like Thunderbird (which I do use for IMAP e-mail) is that I really like the portability of using a web-based system, even if I rarely take advantage of it. Im fact, Bloglines even has a mobile-optimized version which I can use on my cellphone, which is great downloading a bunch of posts and reading on a plane.
I really dig the portabilityof web-based everything. I can blog from other places, I can e-mail from other places. Pretty much I can work (like, earn a living) from any web-connected browser!
I’ll be curious to know how you feel about your conversion in a few months, Lance. But really my loyalty is just to syndication, I don’t care how people use it, as long as they do.
Yeah, you just named the number one downside to leaving Bloglines. Right now my lifestyle (grad student) involves a strong correlation between my blog-reading time and my being-near-my-laptop time, so it’s no big deal. Next fall I enter the workforce, and it really could go either way on whether it’s a good thing to not be able to get to my feeds from my desk. I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes!
I really like Newsgator. I’ve set up and seeded with feeds a demo account at http://newsgator.com if you’d like to see what it looks like. username: marshalldemo pw: welcome
I also wrote a post folks might find helpful about organizing rss feeds, http://marshallk.com/?p=21
Finally, I think it’s noteworthy that Bloglines is now owned by IAC, the same folks who own Ticketmaster, a company that’s faced a lot of criticism for their corporate control over the music scene. One similar move that Bloglines has taken is that though they call themselves a search engine, the RSS feeds for their searches are not usable by non-bloglines users.