Goggle as my aggregator?

I have been using Lektora as my feeds aggregator for about 6 months or so. I like it. It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux and looks the same in both IE and Firefox. Even when Lektora began including adds between feed items, I still continued to use it. I like that it is browser integrated. I like that it is simple to use. I like that I can tell anyone who asks about RSS that I use a very easy aggregator that I can help them get started with.

Recently, I have been playing around with the Drupal aggregator on MPOW’s website. I like that Drupal’s aggregator lets me broadcast a set of feeds to everyone that visits my site. But…it isn’t intended for personal use. What about Bloglines? Blocked by our Bess filter. Sure, Yahoo! has had something like this for a while, but it was always so very Yahoo! (by which I mean cluttered, ADHD, and filled with advertising. Not to mention blocked by Bess.

Google, however, seems to be upping the ante in the crack…err…browser wars. I have been enjoying Google’s personalization page for a while now, especially since it isn’t (yet) blocked by our filter. Now I don’t know if they had this before, but when they moved the “Add Content” button to the upper left corner, I went back in to look at the options. Then I saw that Google now has an add feed option for custom additions to your home page (apparently added on 7/25 according to the labs.google.com update). Add to that a very slick drag-and-drop interface for placing and moving, and you have a nice infomancy tool.

The whole point of RSS is that it takes content and moves it front and center. As much as Google seems to be taking over the world (and other celestial bodies) you have to admit that they have some serious infomancy at work here. It didn’t take long for suggest to work its way into OPACs…how long until we can set up a library interface that makes use of the Google Fusion/Personal Home Page services?

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