Lately, I've become disenchanted with Bloglines. My work day is fast-paced, and my memory is extremely short. When I open a web page, if I have to wait very long to view it, I'm likely to have forgotten what I'd planned to do next. And there's always a next...a next site to go to, a next search to do, whatever.
Recently, I've noticed that when I open Bloglines, it takes longer and longer to display the feeds. And if I should attempt to view a feed post before it has finished loading the page, I'm very likely to have a browser crash. By the time my frustration has built up, I've forgotten everything that was in my mind.
Today, I decided to check out desktop RSS feed readers, making the assumption that a desktop reader would be faster than waiting for a web page to load. And even if it was slow, it wouldn't crash my browser.
Finding a reader proved to be a little more work than I'd expected. A few searches showed there were many choices, but not that many really good choices. And being the ultimate cheapskate that I am, the first requirement was that it needed to be free.
I tried a few. Some worked. Some didn't. Some were ok, but didn't "grab" me. But I think I've found the ultimate desktop feed reader for me. It's called GreatNews (subtitled The Intelligent RSS Reader). Here's a few of the reasons I like it.
- Can categorize feeds. You can either see all feeds in a category, or just specific ones.
- Easy on the eyes. You can choose different Styles on the toolbar so that the feeds look the way you want them too. I'm partial to the Firefox Sage style, but the rest are nice too, including Newspaper, Brief, Essay, Simple, and Readability.
- Built-in Browser - If I want to see the rest of the post, I don't have to wait for my browser to load. It just loads right there in front of me.
- Quick! No waiting.
- Free!
While my choice of RSS feed readers doesn't directly impact SEO, it does impact my ability to work efficiently, and that means I get more SEO work done. So that's my SEO tip of the day, even if you don't agree it's an SEO tip. 😛
Donna – what’re you doin’ to me? I’m just getting used t0 Bloglines…
Great post and good find on that tool DD!
I have also become tired of Bloglines. You make a great point since FEEDS are supposed to save time and energy when monitoring a large amount of different ones, instead of taking more time to download or load on a page.
Let us know if you continue to like GreatNews after using it awhile!