New Online RSS Reader
February 1st, 2006 by Christopher HarrisFrom Webosphere, a nifty little Web 2.0 tool review site, comes word of a new RSS reader. This is something I have been looking for. Though I like Google Reader and use it as my main reader, it still has issues at times. I am also not totally sold on the way it combines all my feeds into a single page, though I am kind of getting the ability to tag my feeds and display categories. I know Bloglines is one of the more popular readers out there, but the lack of opml import [a special file format with all of your feeds] and other things leave me feeling less than satisfied by that service as well.
Enter Attensa, or more specifically, Attensa Online. It is still plugging away at the first run of my rather large opml import, but what I am seeing so far is promising. Not perfect, mind you - after uploading the opml feed list I had to check the ones to add. What made it really bad was there was no check all, and shift-check didn’t work. Still, I like the clean interface and the ability to provide an opml file to get people started in a training session. I have a training on Managing Digital Information Overload coming up in 2 weeks, and hopefully this will be the RSS reader used.
February 1st, 2006 at 8:49 pm
According to Bloglines’ help page, it does support OPML import. (I know for a fact that it supports OPML export.)
February 1st, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Ahh…so it does. They were just hiding it on me all this time!
Thanks for the heads up.
February 1st, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Maybe I was a bit too quick to dismiss bloglines. Still, I think they could do with a serious usability overhaul. I found the import link finally, but it is hiding under “edit” instead of obvious under “add”. To make it more confusing, when you click add, it opens a new window in the main frame, but when you click edit, it just changes the sidebar.
Which isn’t to say that Attensa isn’t having some usability issues as well. For one, they could use some alt-text when I hover over their odd looking buttons.
February 3rd, 2006 at 2:59 pm
[...] n enough to switch from Bloglines, but I’m getting there. See Techcrunch’s and Infomancy’s posts on the subject. technorati tags: attensa+online, attensa, feeds, feed, rss, aggrega [...]
February 5th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
It sure looks nicer than bloglines. I like the easy switch from RSS to Web style feed and the quick change from title only to title and first line.
But, the import isn’t that cool; breaks folders. Wouldn’t it make more sense to retain that information? And no export……
I use bloglines as a backup. And to use its share feature (by folder/category) to make a blogroll page on Librarian in the Middle (http://beiffert.net )
I can change subscriptions in SharpReader(http://sharpreader.net/), then export/import to Bloglines. The changes then are picked up automatically in the blogroll.