My name's Jacob and I'm a blog addict
I'm also unemployed, gaining weight and live with my parents, but that's not the topic for today.
If, like me, you are interested in keeping up with all the online ramblings of your friends, family and political analysts then you just have to know when someone posts an update! Clicking through your favorites, looking at AIM profiles, or manually keying in foshee.blogspot.com is just no longer acceptable. (Doing that 15 times a day is just not efficient.)
So, thankfully hundreds of software developers (God bless them all) have been hard at work writing blog/news reading software. These programs automatically check to see when posts have been made. They also give you a one-stop interface to see what those of us with fantastically interesting lives have been up to.
I downloaded 4 of these programs and will give you my candid evaluation here. If you are not like me and could care less about software to read blogs, then stop reading right now. It only gets worse.
4th Place: Pluck
Selected as a a C|Net Editor's choice, it gets last place with me simply because of the fact that it aggravated me the most.
Pluck is not a stand-alone application. Instead it is used as an Explorer Bar in Internet Explorer (like History or Favorites). This means that to install it, all your IE windows have to be closed (strike one). It also adds buttons to your IE toolbars, and I hate it when new software changes interfaces I have taken the time to customize. It shows a complete disregard for the whole concept.
Pluck also claims to be ``Adware Spyware Free,'' yet it is constantly advertising Ebay, Amazon and Google among other things. We all know I love Google, so the last thing I need to see is an ad for it. (strike two)
Finally, its major fault is feature-bloat. It is just overloaded with features I am not looking for in a news reader. This makes the interface ridiculously complicated. (It took me far too long to figure out how to add my own feed.) You even have to sign up for a an account to use some of the features. As if anyone wants to sign up for yet another online account for anything... (strike three)
3rd Place: SharpReader
This package actually suffers from the opposite problem as Pluck. Instead of being overwhelmed, the user (me) was left guessing by the sparsity of the interface. While context (right-click) menus had plenty of options, none of them were: Add a new feed. That is an absent-minded omission and hopefully will be corrected in future versions.
Otherwise the application is clean, simple, and possesses the expected features.
2nd Place: BlogExpress
I was happily using this software for a few days, pleased with its attractive toolbars and easy-to-learn interface. It also provides multitab browsing (with the option of opening new IE windows).
Unfortunately it has a couple annoying bugs. First, it sometimes ignores formatting like paragraph breaks in Blogger posts. Second, it does not correctly interpret the links to individual Blogger posts. Instead, when you try to open a post, it brings you to a page with an error. Perhaps Blogger is not following the XML standard, or perhaps BlogExpress really has a bug. Either way, its a major handicap in using it.
1st Place: Feedreader
As they say on the homepage, it is simple and lightweight. It provides the features I want, without the annoying extras. And it handles Blogger feeds appropriately.
The toolbar has just a few simple options which are easy to understand, and you can customize which buttons show up. My major complaint would be that you cannot change the size of the buttons or remove the labels. They are too large for my taste, and the labels become superfluous after some experience.
For you real computer nerds, it is also open source (under GPL), so if you really don't like something about it you can change it yourself!
Well, I know this has been one of my more technical posts, so I apologize for those of you who found it boring... But should you embrace your addiction to my blog anytime soon, you should consult this post to see how best to keep up with me.
If you are wondering what the address is for my site feed, it is:
http://foshee.blogspot.com/atom.xml
This follows the same standard as other Blogger and Blogspot blogs. Just take the normal address and add atom.xml to the end.
By the way, does anyone know how to subscribe to LiveJournal feeds?
Thanks for reading, dear Blogfan!
If, like me, you are interested in keeping up with all the online ramblings of your friends, family and political analysts then you just have to know when someone posts an update! Clicking through your favorites, looking at AIM profiles, or manually keying in foshee.blogspot.com is just no longer acceptable. (Doing that 15 times a day is just not efficient.)
So, thankfully hundreds of software developers (God bless them all) have been hard at work writing blog/news reading software. These programs automatically check to see when posts have been made. They also give you a one-stop interface to see what those of us with fantastically interesting lives have been up to.
I downloaded 4 of these programs and will give you my candid evaluation here. If you are not like me and could care less about software to read blogs, then stop reading right now. It only gets worse.
4th Place: Pluck
Selected as a a C|Net Editor's choice, it gets last place with me simply because of the fact that it aggravated me the most.
Pluck is not a stand-alone application. Instead it is used as an Explorer Bar in Internet Explorer (like History or Favorites). This means that to install it, all your IE windows have to be closed (strike one). It also adds buttons to your IE toolbars, and I hate it when new software changes interfaces I have taken the time to customize. It shows a complete disregard for the whole concept.
Pluck also claims to be ``Adware Spyware Free,'' yet it is constantly advertising Ebay, Amazon and Google among other things. We all know I love Google, so the last thing I need to see is an ad for it. (strike two)
Finally, its major fault is feature-bloat. It is just overloaded with features I am not looking for in a news reader. This makes the interface ridiculously complicated. (It took me far too long to figure out how to add my own feed.) You even have to sign up for a an account to use some of the features. As if anyone wants to sign up for yet another online account for anything... (strike three)
3rd Place: SharpReader
This package actually suffers from the opposite problem as Pluck. Instead of being overwhelmed, the user (me) was left guessing by the sparsity of the interface. While context (right-click) menus had plenty of options, none of them were: Add a new feed. That is an absent-minded omission and hopefully will be corrected in future versions.
Otherwise the application is clean, simple, and possesses the expected features.
2nd Place: BlogExpress
I was happily using this software for a few days, pleased with its attractive toolbars and easy-to-learn interface. It also provides multitab browsing (with the option of opening new IE windows).
Unfortunately it has a couple annoying bugs. First, it sometimes ignores formatting like paragraph breaks in Blogger posts. Second, it does not correctly interpret the links to individual Blogger posts. Instead, when you try to open a post, it brings you to a page with an error. Perhaps Blogger is not following the XML standard, or perhaps BlogExpress really has a bug. Either way, its a major handicap in using it.
1st Place: Feedreader
As they say on the homepage, it is simple and lightweight. It provides the features I want, without the annoying extras. And it handles Blogger feeds appropriately.
The toolbar has just a few simple options which are easy to understand, and you can customize which buttons show up. My major complaint would be that you cannot change the size of the buttons or remove the labels. They are too large for my taste, and the labels become superfluous after some experience.
For you real computer nerds, it is also open source (under GPL), so if you really don't like something about it you can change it yourself!
Well, I know this has been one of my more technical posts, so I apologize for those of you who found it boring... But should you embrace your addiction to my blog anytime soon, you should consult this post to see how best to keep up with me.
If you are wondering what the address is for my site feed, it is:
http://foshee.blogspot.com/atom.xml
This follows the same standard as other Blogger and Blogspot blogs. Just take the normal address and add atom.xml to the end.
By the way, does anyone know how to subscribe to LiveJournal feeds?
Thanks for reading, dear Blogfan!
2 Comments:
Jacob, you have too much spare time, I think you need a job.
I discovered Bloglines.com when I was scanning through my site's accesss logs a few weeks ago. At first I was annoyed that people were reading my entries without going to my site, but then I realized that it didn't really matter; I'm assured that people are seeing what I'm writing, even if they choose to ignore it, and they still have to come to the page to leave comments. I like Bloglines because it's free (and mysteriously, ad-free), and I can read my feeds from any PC that has a browser. It also has a great search feature where you can scan through their list of already-tracked feeds (they don't give an exact number, but it's upwards of 15000) and indexed posts and articles, and they have a recommendations feature which is marginally interesting. It only updates feeds once an hour, but that's good for me because it keeps me from being an info-glutton.
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