I’ve been playing with Bloglines today and have formed an opinion. It is a good concept with a solid UI that is ultimately buggy. I know that Jenny has spoken highly of it, but I’m going to have to give it the thumbs down.
Bloglines is an RSS aggregator, which is to the web browser what crack is to sugar. If you like crack, you’ll love RSS readers. Most RSS readers are desktop applications, but Bloglines is part of a new breed of web based RSS readers.
I need something like Bloglines, because I’m running into the predictable problem with NetNewsWire: when I switch computers between home and office I lose my state. When I get home I have to mark all my stuff as read, and the same when I get to the office. And then there’s the whole double subscribing thing…
Bloglines does quite well feature-wise, it has good notification and weblog integration. The downside comes from the bugginess. They have caching issues, and that prevents me from seeing new items. I know they’re there because you’re notifying me about them, but when I load the page it says no new items. Or maybe it’s caching the notification. Whatever, either way I’m not able to use the service to get RSS updates so as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t work. Time to start looking into nntp//rss…
[Update: I’ve had some luck emptying my cache before every time I check the site, which is a PITA but works. If they fix the bug (I’ve described it in detail as well as a potential fix in email to Mark Fletcher) I’ll write up a more comprehensive review]
2 responses to “Bloglines”
I’m sorry to hear that you’re having problems with Bloglines. I’d like to track down the problem, as this is the first we’ve heard of it. If you can, please email me. Are you using a web proxy of any kind? Also, can you tell me what browser/operating system combo you’re using? Thanks.
i have seeen weird things with the notification on the catagory list not updating correctly not listing that there were updates. and some times people who do not post to lj regularly it will show all of thier entries of recently but i’m not sure if that is a lj or bloglines problem. other then that, i have no othere problems with the service.