Agylen

Those devilish Googlers are releasing new products once a week. This time it’s Google Reader’s turn. Check it out if you’re the kind of person who uses web aggregators. As for me, apart from looking in awe at the usual display of Ajaxy techniques that we’ve come to expect from any new serious offering of web-based services, I don’t think I’ll be using it at all. I am really too comfortable with NetNewsWire to consider switching.

A web-based aggregator will never be able to compete with a desktop one as long as the latter can work in disconnected mode. Case in point: Yesterday, as I was stuck in Schiphol airport while my return plane was delayed once again because of the fucking bomb, or of the fog, or both, I could either fire up NetNewsWire and read the couple hundred or so items it had previously downloaded, or be robbed 6 Euros for every 30 minutes of WiFi connectivity if I wanted to stay online. And even if I had accepted that sort of thievery, still I wouldn’t have been able to continue reading while on the plane.

Unfortunately, the world still isn’t a perfect place, as many of those 200 items were just excerpts and I couldn’t visit the corresponding web page to continue reading in case I were interested, even if I wanted. This is one more reason while I am growing more and more annoyed by partial RSS feeds. If authors are doing this to force us readers to visit their website, they should consider that sometimes we just cannot.

I am listing here some of them, probably the most interesting but certainly the ones I miss more when I cannot read them. If enough of my readers click on these links, maybe the owners of the linked sites will notice the referral traffic and think about the issue some more.

ZD Open Source, Burningbird, Jon’s Radio, ongoing, Robert C. Martin, Otaku, The Fishbowl, ProBlogger, Zeldman.