This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Chris Winters.
Original Post: Bloglines: I'm hooked
Feed Title: cwinters.com
Feed URL: http://www.cwinters.com/search/registrar.php?domain=jroller.com®istrar=sedopark
Feed Description: Chris Winters on Java, programming and technology, usually in that order.
Preface: it took me quite a while to get into reading feeds for blogs (miss author context, miss comments, etc.) but eventually I settled on Pulp Fiction. It was cheap, looked sharp, and allowed me to read entries offline, which worked pretty well when I was on vacation and had net access every couple days or so. I had a few minor interface quibbles -- I didn't like having to focus into the content pane to scroll, why not do it like Mail.app? -- but overall I was happy.
Then Mark mentioned Bloglines some time ago. I dismisssed it because I generally brought in my Powerbook to work and read PF from there. But at my new job I'm in a more secure environment and bringing in the PB doesn't make sense when they've given me another laptop as my main machine (IBM ThinkPad T42). Reading blogs once a day got me in the hole pretty quickly.
Then I saw a link -- maybe from Udell's recent articles? -- refreshing my memory about Bloglines. A few clicks and I had an account. Next, importing my existing feedlist was a piece of cake -- out of PF into OPML then into Bloglines -- and just like that I was up and running. Nice. You can see my feeds here, although they're not yet organized into folders.
My only concerns are a) offline reading and b) uptime/performance. There's probably an offline reader already (if only thru screen scraping). And it's such a valuable service that I can see them charging to meet bandwidth/hardware needs. I'd gladly pony up some bucks.
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