Bloglines The Great
I’ve been using Bloglines still and have to say it’s still fast. I can’t go back to Google Reader now, not for a while anyway. The thing is fast, really fast, and I like it. With that said, what could be done to make it better?
- Why does everything have to be marked as read when I click on a feed? With Google Reader, I click on a feed and use j and k to scroll, but when I reach an individual story, it is marked as read. Minor irritation, but what happens when the browser closes mid-feed? I’d miss out.
- Fugly! Please make this thing look better, please!
- No linkblog - There is a blog feature of Bloglines, but I could care less about it. From what I’ve gathered, it’s like having an actual blog since you write about something in your feeds. I don’t want that, I want a linkblog like Google reader, just press a button and it puts that entry from the feed into a blog of entries which I find interesting, or can use to read later.
- Marking a feed item as unread sucks. I don’t even know how something like this could suck, but it worked better in Google Reader.
- Stupid features such as a wall of images are being worked on, but no ability to search feeds? Google can’t search feeds either, so we’re even, I guess.
- We need an “all” button like Google reader so I don’t have to go to each feed individual feed to read. Of course, if that was done, the whole thing about only marking items you actually read as read would have to be implemented.
- We need something like Google Trends, use the information to suggest blogs.
- Get aquired by Google.
- Get a toolbar or something that will work with Firefox. I know there’s a notifier, but I’m none too keen on downloading it.
This must all sound terrible but it really is not. In the end it comes down to speed and functionality which Bloglines has, but they’re not the only ones on the block, so they do need to buck up a bit, listen to their customers. Had I been employed there, I would actually go into more detail as to the things that could improve the service. As it is now, I just want a product that works better. 
