I've been looking for a while for a good blog aggregator. There's a huge need for one. Most people read a variety of blogs, and who wants to keep checking up on them just to see if there are any new articles? It is very inefficient, both for your time, and for hits on the server.
I've experimented with some solutions, such as using the Thunderbird, NetNewsWire, or using web-based Kinja, or the new MyYahoo!, but was dissatisfied. The client-side apps work great, but since they are client-side, I can't use them from two different computers and have the same data on what is already read. Kinja is web-based, but when I tried it, it was slow to update, only getting new articles long after they had been published on their websites. MyYahoo! was prompt, but did not include summaries of articles, only their titles.
Finally, I tried Bloglines, which is web-based, and quick to update. Furthermore, it has great auto-discovery, and an easy to use interface. It still has a few problems, though. First of all, there seems to be no way to go directly to the actual page which shows the new summaries of the blogs, which seems to me the place where everyone wants to have quick access. Plus, they have a blog notifier, but it doesn't seem to work very well (at least the web-based one). But, Bloglines seems good enough, and now I'm regularly reading many more blogs than I have been before. Yay! A victory in either reducing information overload, or wasting time. Or both.
Posted by ahyatt at January 6, 2005 04:37 PMI use Bloglines.
You can go to the main index of a blog by clicking the title of the blog at the top of the right side of the Bloglines page.
Posted by: Brian Marston on January 7, 2005 10:25 AMNo, you misundestand. I want a link that will take me directly to the page that shows me the latest from my feeds. The url "http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs" does not do that, instead it shows me buttons I can put on my site, as well as the list of my feeds. I have to click on that list to see new stuff. And that click goes to the same URL.
So that's two clicks, and I only want one. Perhaps I should look at the page source and try passing in some parameters.
Posted by: Andrew Hyatt on January 7, 2005 12:16 PMI found out the URL to use:
http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?all=1
This is from reading the source. At any rate, it could be a bit easier to use.
Posted by: Andrew Hyatt on January 7, 2005 12:51 PM