Please forgive me.
I must confess, I've cheated on you. You've worked so hard to supply me with my daily dose of satisfaction, intelligence, and humor. And what have I done? I left you for someone else. Well, I've figured out how wrong I was and now I want you back. Will you take me? Will you forgive me for leaving you? I need you. I can't take life without you. Please take me back.
OK, for all you sick puppies out there, NO, I'm not having marital problems (quite the opposite is true in that department). Last week I decided to try the new Google Reader. I'm always excited to see new things from Google. Everything they've done to date is widely used on my PC, both at home and work. I don't know what I would do without Picasa, Blogger, Google Desktop, Google Maps, etc. But I'm quite disappointed with Google Reader. I've been a Blogline fan since Mike turned me on to it a while back and have come to like what I get from it. Ya, sometimes it doesn't load my feeds for a couple of days and sometimes I get the little plumber guy telling me that I can't read my feeds right now, but what software or service doesn't have issues every once in a while.
So, here's the run-down on why I went back to Bloglines.
1. Oops... There was an error, please try again in a few seconds. Yes, I know, it's probably because it's still in beta that I get errors, but almost 1/2 the time I was unable to load my Reader home page. Got very annoying when I did want to read my feeds.
2. One post at a time. Still being a dialup man, only having the ability to view one post at a time instead of the entire feed from that site or category was very annoying. Even at work with the fast connection I hated scrolling through one by one. I subscribe to a couple of photo groups on Flickr and it's not unusual for me to get 100-200 posts a day. With Bloglines I could click on the feed and have it load all the thumbnails at once. With Reader it was select... load... view... next... load... view... repeat. Took me forever. Not the way I want to view my feeds.
3. Tell me I have something. One of the things that actually stops me from doing things with Bloglines was the notifier. It makes me stop what I'm doing, killing my productivity, but I want to know when I have new stuff. That's why I subscribe to the feeds. Otherwise I would go look at the sites if I wanted to just browse, but no, tell me I have something new.
4. How do I add something? I love how Bloglines has the extension to Firefox that just allows you to click the subscribe button and it loads it all up for you in Bloglines. Not so with Reader. First find the feed page, copy the url, then load into reader. No thanks. Too many steps. I'm lazy.
5. Well... I'm sure there was more, but I didn't stick around to find them.
Not everything was bad with Reader, so don't give up Google. The interface was nice looking. I see potential to integrate it with the personalized home page, integrated with the feed search, starring posts, easily reviewing posts you've already read, ...I like Google... You just needed to slow down. I'm sure all you folks at Google used Bloglines or something when you thought this one up, so why didn't you copy all the things we love about it and then add the Google factor? What were you thinking? Oh well, take your licks and go make it better. You know where to find me when you're ready.
OK, for all you sick puppies out there, NO, I'm not having marital problems (quite the opposite is true in that department). Last week I decided to try the new Google Reader. I'm always excited to see new things from Google. Everything they've done to date is widely used on my PC, both at home and work. I don't know what I would do without Picasa, Blogger, Google Desktop, Google Maps, etc. But I'm quite disappointed with Google Reader. I've been a Blogline fan since Mike turned me on to it a while back and have come to like what I get from it. Ya, sometimes it doesn't load my feeds for a couple of days and sometimes I get the little plumber guy telling me that I can't read my feeds right now, but what software or service doesn't have issues every once in a while.
So, here's the run-down on why I went back to Bloglines.
1. Oops... There was an error, please try again in a few seconds. Yes, I know, it's probably because it's still in beta that I get errors, but almost 1/2 the time I was unable to load my Reader home page. Got very annoying when I did want to read my feeds.
2. One post at a time. Still being a dialup man, only having the ability to view one post at a time instead of the entire feed from that site or category was very annoying. Even at work with the fast connection I hated scrolling through one by one. I subscribe to a couple of photo groups on Flickr and it's not unusual for me to get 100-200 posts a day. With Bloglines I could click on the feed and have it load all the thumbnails at once. With Reader it was select... load... view... next... load... view... repeat. Took me forever. Not the way I want to view my feeds.
3. Tell me I have something. One of the things that actually stops me from doing things with Bloglines was the notifier. It makes me stop what I'm doing, killing my productivity, but I want to know when I have new stuff. That's why I subscribe to the feeds. Otherwise I would go look at the sites if I wanted to just browse, but no, tell me I have something new.
4. How do I add something? I love how Bloglines has the extension to Firefox that just allows you to click the subscribe button and it loads it all up for you in Bloglines. Not so with Reader. First find the feed page, copy the url, then load into reader. No thanks. Too many steps. I'm lazy.
5. Well... I'm sure there was more, but I didn't stick around to find them.
Not everything was bad with Reader, so don't give up Google. The interface was nice looking. I see potential to integrate it with the personalized home page, integrated with the feed search, starring posts, easily reviewing posts you've already read, ...I like Google... You just needed to slow down. I'm sure all you folks at Google used Bloglines or something when you thought this one up, so why didn't you copy all the things we love about it and then add the Google factor? What were you thinking? Oh well, take your licks and go make it better. You know where to find me when you're ready.
posted by Phil at 7:30 PM
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