Monkey on Wordpress

Interesting update to Google Reader tonight, people on your Google Talk list will have their shared items in your Google Reader shown, if you want. Did what I say make no sense? In essence, you can add me to Google talk and have items I share from my Google Reader list . Don’t take my word for it, read the official thing here. If you want to see what I am sharing, add me to google talk (or in chat in gmail) to see what I’m sharing. I’m going to start sharing things more now, so hey, why not? Add samureye to Google chat, or just subscribe the old fashioned way. Fair warning, you’re bound to get a lot of tech, hip-hop and random content.

WHY, oh why is it Bloglines is so fast at adding feeds and Google Reader is so SLOOOOOOOW? All I want from an RSS reader:

• Add feeds as quickly as with Bloglines but efficiently as  Google - Bloglines adds feeds quickly but you get different options to choose from and it’s from the same feed, I have no idea why this is. With Google Reader when you add a feed, if it actually is added, it will just show site content, no choosing which one.
• J and K go up and down - both have them, yay!
• When I choose a feed and press J and K, only that one item is read, NOT THE ENTIRE FEED, OK Bloglines? Google has the advantage here.
• I want to be able to drag and drop feeds easily. Bloglines allows for me to drag and drop feeds but I have to go into edit first. I want to do it like a desktop application, just drag and drop, not go to edit first, also, it needs to work faster. I think the ideal thing is for it to go like Google Docs.

I am frustrated, I need to easily edit these feeds into folder and import them. I was thinking that getting a desktop application would be good for speed of feeds but I liked the simplicity that a web application offered not to mention being able to get to feeds easily no matter where you are. I am wondering if I could export all the feeds I have in Bloglines and Google Reader and import them into a desktop RSS reader and then manage them there and import them back into Google. I don’t know and don’t think I want to, I’ve been through too much and I am frustrated now. Anyone been in a similar predicament? Is there a desktop RSS reader that makes it worth using so much? I tried simple reader, I believe it is called and FeedDemon which is supposed to be so great, but it wasn’t for me because of the volume of feeds. I need speed.

Ideally now, if I could find a way to easily manage feeds and then allow Bloglines to only mark individual stories in a feed as read instead of the entire feed, I would go to Bloglines maybe, because the speed is nice. Argh.

Am I the only one that experiences Firefox crashes thanks to Google reader? This is happening too much. How am I supposed to be efficient in reading all these sites with the tools not up to par? First I can’t add new feeds, now it crashes my browser. GOOOOOGLLEEE!

Is there a good way to do this? I need to put feeds in new folders and there just doesn’t seem to be an easy way to do this other than placing feeds in a new folder with the name you want but to do that you would have to know exactly what feeds go where. Drag and drop would be nice.

So, as you may or may not know, I’m back with Google Reader. What can I say, she’s more in sync with me and the relationship overall is good, so I’ve moved back in and here’s my linkblog. There’s not much there since I’m not easily excited and I have no idea if you might be interested in subscribing to it. If at least one person is then I will make a more conscious effort to highlight some interesting stories that I may or may not blog about. But this isn’t one-way, I want your link blog, yes I do. I’m all-encompassing like that.

Been a while, I know - been working on two projects, one of which should come to fruition by mid June. That said - I’ve moved back to Google Reader! Bloglines just didn’t do it anymore. Specifically, I’ve had the same few items marked as unread for the longest while, at first it was because I wanted to read those entries later on rather than skip them as I do many feeds, but when I was ready to mark the entries read and flush them out it just wouldn’t happen. That along with the aesthetic aspect just threw me off. To me, Bloglines is great for a beginner in RSS, I suppose, but Google’s Reader just drew me back just because it looks so nice and it’s link blog, starring and ease of use thanks to shortcuts is really great. I’ve also subscribed to quite a bit more feeds and GReader seems to be keeping up.

Google reader has only a few bad things about it at the moment. I just want to know why it is it won’t say how many items you actually have to read, it currents just says (100+) but that does me no good. Also, I’ve placed my feeds into folders and now want to re-name my folder (called tags) and I don’t see an easy way to do this, just deleting the folder and placing feeds back in there individually. This is way too tedious.

I’ve also started using FeedDemon again, because I think it might be better to read feeds offline as well, but Google Reader is way too appealing. Google, damn you, you’re taking over the world and I like it.

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.

I like Google Reader, I like it a lot, but my problem is that it runs rather slowly. I’ve heard people talking about Bloglines before, I joined, didn’t think much of it, but decided to give it another go today. The feeds in there were full, and stopped updating to the latest stuff for some feeds (Did you know Newsvine isn’t requiring invites anymore? ;p) but it’s fine. You know what I realised? Google Reader is pretty similar to Bloglines, it has the keyboard shortKuts you Just need to use. I think I will use both Google Reader and Bloglines for a while and see just which of these is the best one to use. If Google can improve on it’s speed, that would be great. Bloglines is moving blazingly fast, I’m impressed. The downside, it looks horrible.

But is the way Bloglines looks really that big of an issue? Well, it’s certainly not anything too bad, it’s just the flash and functionality of Google Reader has me spoilt. Then again, I rather a fast, functional reader that looks good as opposed to a slow, good looking reader. What do you use to read RSS? I’ve used FeedDemon before but I don’t want a desktop client, I’m big on web services and there’s the whole catching up on your feeds no matter where you are. That’s a big one. I did notice bloglines saying they’re hiring for a UI person. Changes seem abound. Again, I’d love to hear what other people use - I’ll be doing my own research. Prior to Google Reader, I used Netvibes, I still have some feeds there. Prior to that, I used SearchFox RSS but they were aquired by Yahoo! if memory serves me right. The service closed down and nothing was mentioned about them again. I also know of people using FeedLounge, but I’m not familiar with this “paying” thing.