Look Ma, No Aggregator

In the comments of a recent post about NetNewsWire, Ben suggested I try Bloglines, a web-based aggregator. The Bloglines server subscribes to the rss feeds I want to read, and allows me to read them via my browser. This offers two features I value – location independance and platform independance. No matter what computer I’m on, or what OS its running (I switched nearly a year ago, but the rest of the world hasn’t caught up), if there’s a browser available, I can read my feeds. Plus, the status of what posts I have or have not read is managed centrally, so I can always read only new items.

I didn’t get around to using Bloglines until this week. The next day, Feedster, the rss search engine, unveiled their new service myFeedster, a web-based aggregator. Feedster is a great service, so I thought I’d give myFeedster a try as well. Both web-based aggregators have some interesting features. Here are my observations/comparisons, in no particular order:

  • Both sites cache old entries, so you can view posts that have rolled off the RSS feed.
  • myFeedster lets you search a single feed or all of your feeds. You could do this previously using Feedster’s advanced search, but you had to supply the URL of the feed or your OPML file. Bloglines lets you search your feeds or all feeds. The all feeds search lets it compete with Feedster, but Feedster clearly has the edge in searching.
  • The feed for this site is RSS 2.0, and contains both a brief plaintext description (in the element), and the complete xhtml content of the post (in an xhtml element with appropriate namespace declaration). myFeedster only shows the description, but Bloglines shows the full content. Bloglines saves me alot of time by showing me the whole post.
  • Bloglines supports categorizing feeds, like NetNewsWire. myFeedster does not. Bloglines did not import my categories from my OPML file, however. I don’t know if this is a Bloglines problem or an issue with NetNewsWire Lite’s OMPL export. Bloglines’ OMPL export does include categories.
  • Both services offer blogroll features, but Bloglines lets you mark individual feeds as public or private. Private feeds are not included in your blogroll. Another very cool Bloglines feature is your public feeds view, an url that allows others to see all of your public feeds in the bloglines interfaces. Check out my public feeds.
  • Both services allow you to export OPML.

The number one issue, however, is the interface:

  • myFeedster provides a simple list of posts – all posts updated within a timeframe you specify, within a specific feed. You view one feed at a time. You can see a list of feeds updated within a given time. Reminds a little bit of screen shots I’ve seen of Radio UserLand.
  • Bloglines is a two-paned aggregator. I can’t decide if I like it better than a three-paned aggregator (like NNW), but this is enough to make it the hands-down winner for me. Click the link above for my public feeds to check it out. All the feeds and categories appear on the left in a tree view. If you select a category, you see all new posts, across all feeds in that category. You can also choose to view all posts within a given timeframe. Select a feed and see only the posts for that feed. It also shows you how many unread posts you have for a given feed.

It will be interesting to see how both products evolve. For now, I’ll be using Bloglines to read my feeds, but myFeedster to search them. Speaking of search, while looking up references for this post, I found a couple of interesting things via Feedster:

  • There’s a new web-based aggregator: Fastbuzz. I know little more than the name and url so far, but I’ll try to check it out later.
Tags:
Posted December 18th, 2003 at 4:18 am No Comments »

Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.