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September 23, 2007

Critique of web based RSS Feed Aggregators

Web based RSS feed readers are used for browsing RSS (Real Simple Syndicate) feeds (including blogs, news sites, and other sites with feeds) in order to limit the time needed to be up-to-date on topics of interest. Most of the sites offer search options, where you can enter keywords in the search bar and the aggregator will provide you with sites that are relevant to that topic. Here is my review of the following sites.

Bloglines

I am going to have to say that I automatically took preference to Bloglines because it was the first aggregator that I used, and instantly fell in love with them. But with that said, after having tried some others, I still feel this way. Bloglines is a fairly typical RSS feed reader. The interface is very easy to use and the site is ascetically pleasing. The first thing that you have to do is register, but the is short and easy. After registering, you can start searching keywords and adding feeds to monitor. A feature that I really like is the sorting and managing of the feeds that you are subscribed to. I created folders for each of my interests along with a folder that will contain feeds that are relevant to my wikis (for the term project).

Another thing that I really like about Bloglines is the fact that is free. Another interesting (but useless to me) feature is the ability to change the language of the entire site to over 10 different languages. This allows the site to be used by people from more than English speaking countries to access the site. A final feature that I like is the “Find new blogs” site. This is a list of newly added and recently updates blogs. It is interesting because the variety of the content is vast. It allows me to look around and see anything that I think looks interesting.

Rojo

Similar to Bloglines, Rojo is a RSS feed aggregator, but Rojo also offers the feature of social networking. They allow registered users to browse the feeds of other users to see what people are currently looking at. A feature that Rojo offers is the "What Rojo member are viewing" section on their main page. Another feature of Rojo that I like is the list of short cuts listed on the right side of every page. It makes jumping between feeds very easy.

I found that the hits on Rojo were more opinionated blogs with less factual data, and because of it was less appealing than Bloglines. I also found that the feeds offered a lot more pictures. I am not sure if this is just my topic, or the nature of Rojo in general, so I searched a few different topics and got varying results.

What to do now?

Now it is time for you to be on your way to maximizing your searches. Any popular RSS feed aggregator that you find will be good, but Bloglines and Rojo are a good place to start.

Posted by adamcole at September 23, 2007 07:21 PM