I’m keeping an open mind regarding the new Microsoft RSS Platform introduced in IE 7.0. It will be a standard component of Windows Vista.  I’m perfectly happy having the OS maintain the feeds store and helping with synchronization and letting applications focus on the display of content.  After all, the SocialDynamX software never was a true RSS aggregator.  It basically served as a consumer of a service, just as Microsoft is suggesting applications do in their new platform.  The service in FM Radio was the local Userland Radio server running on the PC.  We simply picked up the data locally from Radio using XML-RPC.

The What

Not sure why any news aggregator worth its salt would make users choose between the so called "River Of News" or NewsPaper views, and supporting folders to organize your feeds.  Support both! "River Of News" works for me at times but I often prefer the folder view.  Often, bloggers refer to nearby posts and if I’m behind on my reading (always), I want to be able to focus on a single blog’s posts.   The folders also allow me to read certain "types" of news depending on my mood.  I have a folder titled "People" that I read most often.  A "News" folder is often optional reading for me and I often empty it without reading it.  Same with my "Technology" and "Entertainment" folder.  Even a newspaper has sections of news.   You have your Front Page, your Metro, your Sports and Lifestyle.

Other opinions: 1 2 3

I often review whether to branch off onto other blogs for more targeted subjects.  I thought categories with RSS feeds might be the solution but they aren’t.  Too many categories and it’s too much to ask people to select and subscribe to them.  I use categories for my convenience.

I’m considering posting programming related posts on another blog.  I don’t mind mixing personal stuff with technology/software related stuff but specific posts and links about C++, C# or WSDL, SQL etc. I think I would be better filtered out from my main blog.  If I ever WERE to have a significant following that seems to be the logical split in my targeted audience.

I enjoyed subscribing to Tim Hussey’s blog while it lasted. He has a lot of good stuff to say.  It was the first feed I tried that had embedded ads. I’m not going to criticize the practice or the business of placing ads in RSS feeds. Certainly it is the author’s prerogative. However, with so many feeds to choose from, I choose to not degrade my experience by having to navigate through ads. Seems to defeat the whole purpose of using an aggregator to "save time" in consuming information.  As long as there are alternatives, I also will make it a policy to not subscribe to feeds containing ads.  The blogsphere is great isn’t it?  So many choices it starts working like the Internet infrastructure itself, many paths to getting to the same place; or in my case, the same information.

I’ll join the chorus of TypePad customers wishing to support Six Apart in the aftermath of the recent outage.  Granted, I don’t run a business using TypePad.  I don’t even have a loyal following that I know of.  My blog is written for myself and I can withstand a few days of down time.  But I agree with Brent and Robert that no technology or service is fool-proof.  I knew when I signed up for digital phone service with Time Warner that I couldn’t expect the reliability of the land-line SBC phone system.  Just two weeks ago, some bonehead technician came to disconnect a neighbor and managed to disconnect my Cable TV, Phone, and Internet access.  It happened in the evening and it was restored by the following evening.  My first reaction was to get angry and demand some type of compensation.  But I quickly cooled and chose to cut them a break.  Recently, Barton Creek Mall here in Austin had a power-outage blamed on a squirrel!  It’s a company’s response that should be judged more than isolated incidents (assuming they are isolated and not reoccurring).

I’ve switched my online news aggregator from Bloglines to Newsgator.  First, I wanted to try it out and compare it to Bloglines.  I like the interface better, especially in how you mark things as read.  I’ve switched for good.  I mainly switched so that I can continue using RSS Bandit and get the benefit of syncing between it and an online news aggregator (supported in latest RSS Bandit 1.3.0.38 release)

Warning, when you export your subscription list from Bloglines in order to import into Newsgator, you’ll want to edit it and remove the high-level “Subscriptions” node, otherwise all your subscriptions will be created inside a folder called subscriptions.

• Update July 9, 2019.   Bloglines and Newsgator are not longer in business.  Here is a page with suggestions on the latest RSS Readers.  I use Feedly on my phone.