August 11, 2005
opinions of news aggregators
I've been reading Welcome to Blogosphere: An Executive Blogger's Guide that I mentioned in my post on Blog guides, tips, & tutorials.
News aggregators are discussed and a few are mentioned. Here are my opinions on the ones mentioned there.
Newsgator Focus on the use of blogs in business environments, and the 'big name' blogs. Definitely attractive to some one who wants to use blogs for a news resource, and to track what's being said. A bit too heavyweight for my tastes and uses. It comes with a Web-based interface and can work wit Outlook Express.(That was the give away for me that the product was not for me, and most appropriate for people who use what comes with their computer, rather than looking for better tools.) A free version is available and fee-based versions (the ubiquitous "pro" version) can be had as well.
FeedReader. A very nice desktop based news aggregator. You download an open-source and free executable that installs FeedReader on your computer system. It is clean, and easy to work with. It comes populated with popular RSS feeds and it's not too hard to add your own. An on-screen pop-up lets you know when new items arrive. It seems pretty nice, but being rooted on one computer is a drawback.
Bloglines I use this daily and like it lots! It's Web-based so I can access my feeds from anywhere by supplying a browser with a URL and then a user name and password. It's easy to create a blog-roll, organize your feeds, and add new feeds. You can install software on a computer that lets you know when new info is available through the RSS/Atom feeds in your list feeds. A very nice product. AskJeeves owns it.
Aggreg8 This, like FeedReader, needs to be downloaded and installed on a computer system. This is supposed to run as an extension to Mozilla. I tried to install it, but it wouldn't work.
FeedDemon Trial version is available, but otherwise you need to pay to use it.
Other lists of aggregators are
RSS Info at blogines
List of News Aggregators at Wikipedia
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