I’m in a bit of a pickle. I’ve been a proud and avid user of Bloglines for a while now; I like the idea of having all my feeds aggregated into one easy to view screen without having to download software and have it synchronise. I chose Bloglines because at the time it was the most common reader people were using, and the little "sub bloglines" button was everywhere making my life much easier.
It’s a little less clear cut now though; after hearing some good reviews from Dadaist from Edinburgh (we went there in 1998, it’s a very nice place) I’m also a user of Google Reader. The original Google Reader interface sucked which I thought was surprising given Google’s previous track record, but their new interface is very polished and much less cluttered than Bloglines. I also like how you can read posts you’ve already seen before; instead of "deleting" posts you’ve already read like Bloglines does (forcing you to use the drop down menu to select previous posts), Google Reader merely shades the headings and borders a lighter colour.
The problem is I’m not quite ready to give up on Bloglines. For one thing I’m lazy and I have a ton of feeds on there that I need to move across… can Bloglines export OPML and can Google Reader import OPML? And of course the one real feature lacking in Google Reader is an automatic public page; with Bloglines I can point anyone to http://bloglines.com/public/rubenerd to see my susbcribed feeds, but for Google Reader you can only "star" individual items. Plus Bloglines still feels like home, if you get my drift.
Has anyone out there made the switch or refused to like I have so far? Any experience or advice?
I may be a bit biased, but I encourage you to give Reader a try. Moving your OPML from Bloglines to Reader is pretty easy:
http://www.google.com/help/reader/faq.html#import
Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer
G’day Mihai,
Thanks for the feedback! The fact that you took the time to read my post and comment so quickly really shows me that you care about your users.
I’ll use the tip you gave me for the OPML, maybe you’ll make me into a Google Reader fan yet. I really do enjoy using the new interface on Google Reader 2.0.1 (I agree with you on software version numbers being more elegant!).
Thanks for the help :).
Ruben
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