Comments on: Saturday surveys: Google Reader vs. Bloglines

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:04:13 +0000

This is interesting, I was just trying to figure this out for myself. In working on my own blog I noticed that bloglines wasn’t getting my feed updates. I’ve still not figured out why. It’s almost like it was caching the feed and was refusing to see new posts, but then like a week or two later it would show the updates. So I tried out Google Reader, and it initially seemed better and also that it was showing updates in a more timely fashion. Yet then it started showing old posts of mine from years ago as new, and I hadn’t done any editing or made any changes to said posts. I loaded all the blogs I follow into both Google and Bloglines and it almost seems that it is dependent on the blog tools each blogger uses. So Google was better for some and got updates quicker for some sites, and bloglines for others. Weird.

By: william

william — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:16:13 +0000

I m also a feed junky, and because I wanted to have some features not available in most feed readers; I have designed a feed reader that matches and best google reader in many areas. To make sure that the feed reader can continue to evolve with the best features in the near future we will be releasing it with an Open Source license.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:27:02 +0000

I used Bloglines for a couple of years until I finally switched to Google Reader. The most annoying thing I had with Bloglines was some feeds text not wrapping correctly, forcing me to scroll to the right when reading from a 1024×768 laptop screen.

If you often read your feeds from a mobile device, Google’s mobile version seems to work really well from an iPhone, which is the main reason I switched. In Google Reader, I also like being able to save items and organize them with tags versus saving the use of folders.

Bloglines’ beta version has an interface more similar to Google Reader’s, which is preferable. There seems to be more options in Bloglines, such as being able to read only feeds from today or the past week or the 3-pane view if you have a very large screen.

By: Siel

Siel — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:31:14 +0000

Alright — It looks like I better sign up for Google Reader — Thanks for the deets, Stephen :)

KateNonymous — I’m not surprised to hear ’bout your Yahoo RSS reader disappointment, considering how much Yahoo mail sucks! I only have it around b/c it’s the email I used to use when I had students, and I want them to be able to contact me if they need rec letters, etc.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:35:04 +0000

I am very wary of having so much information and preferences relying on one supplier, Google, but to date they have not disappointed me yet. I have used Google Reader and tried Sage (firefox) and Google is so portable, it’s the easiest to use for me.

By: KateNonymous

KateNonymous — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:03:13 +0000

I haven’t tried Google Reader, but I know people who have been disappointed. Bloglines isn’t perfect, but it does work better than the incredibly disappointing My Yahoo RSS reader.