For all of those of you that use BlogLines, FeedDemon, RSSBandit, GreatNews, Sage, or any other blog reader, I have to say that you might give
google Reader a chance now. Today they released a major usability enhanced version that (I feel) will be very hard to compete with.
See for yourself:
http://reader.google.com
I have quickly switched back to
google Reader as of... now.
1.) I started into my blogging experience using some Outlook Add-in that treated blog posts like "Newsgroup Threads". It might have been some early versions of
NewsGator, I dont' recall exactly.
2.) Then I used
RSS Bandit for a long time
3.) About a year or two ago, I switched to
FeedDemon and used it for a while. I really liked FeedDemon, but it had some usability issues. FeedDemon was a hassle for me because I blog on my laptop and on my home pc and the read/unread settings are stored locally. When I travelled or had a big day of catching up on one of the pc's, I had to manually sync my settings.
4.) Once
google released their online blog reader, I rejoiced and quickly began using it because I could keep all my RSS feeds updated in one place... online. There were some major usability issues. There was no "newspaper" view, no way to update a group of feeds as "read" without going through them one by one, and some other minor usability issues here and there.
5.)
Issam uses GreatNews and I decided to switch a few weeks ago and try to get used to it. He told me about it almost a year ago and I installed it tried it out, but didn't notice anything
too impressive. It reminded me a lot of FeedDemon only it had "Labels". I didn't think it was cool enough to swtich from my licensed FeedDemon (which I was using at the time). Well, since he has been so loyal to the app all this time, I basically decided to see past it's "local storage" problem and give it another try...
google Readers' usability was getting a bit old and they hadn't made any significant updates yet. I was contetemplating an idea to just write a script to sync my read/unread posts. I was just starting to get used to it's interface and keyboard shortcuts... Until...
6.)
google Reader fixed their usability problems. I've switched back. :)
Thanks
google Gods!