For the last day or so I have been experimenting with Google Reader, seeing how it treats RSS feeds. RSS is a wonderful way to keep up with everything that’s happening out in the blogosphere, and in the Internet as a whole – I can’t imagine life before it.
I prefer web-based RSS readers, because I use my computer at home as much as my computer at work, and because at work I use a minimum of three different computers every week. Web-based means I don’t have to worry about synchronising my reader – I can pick up where I left off, wherever I am. I haven’t been using RSS for that long, and my current, and until now preferred, reader has been Bloglines. Until now, you ask?
Well, I’m not sure I can say that Google Reader has ousted Bloglines from its pedestal just yet, but the little experiment I’ve been conducting has made me wonder whether or not I should be using other tools for my subscriptions. For the past couple of weeks or so I’ve been wondering about certain feeds and whether updates were being displayed in a timely manner in Bloglines. Some usually frequently updated sites were not updating in Bloglines. Some feeds seemed to have “stalled” in Bloglines, with no new updates after a particular date. This blog was a case in point – the problem seems to have fixed itself now: Bloglines is updating again – but for almost a week there, new posts weren’t appearing. Sage, the RSS reader I use as a tester with Firefox, was displaying updates, so I didn’t think it was a problem with Blogger Beta…
The experiment has been very very simple. I imported my Bloglines subscriptions into Google Reader and just observed which feeds were updating in both readers. I can report that for some feeds, Google Reader seems to be much faster than Bloglines when it comes to displaying updates.
For instance, using Google Reader, I read, at around 1pm yesterday, that Kathryn is going to have some explaining to do (the Yellow Wiggle’s retired). I didn’t notice this update in Bloglines until that evening (8:38pm).
Also, at around that time yesterday evening Google Reader displayed an update of Ponderance. Ponderance is a Blogger blog – is this an issue? This morning, Bloglines still hasn’t registered any updates.
Julie Leung finally blogged after a long silence yesterday (I’m pleased, I enjoy Julie’s writing)! This, again, was brought to me by Google Reader last night. Bloglines only registered the update this morning…
Other feeds that are displaying updates in Google Reader this morning (but not in Bloglines): Ampersand Duck, Justine Larbalestier, Two Peas, No Pod (two new posts I think), Mooiness, Pegasus Librarian… I’m not going to list them all, but you get the picture. (Some feeds seem to be updating at roughly the same times in both readers, of course. Bloglines is not universally slower than Google Reader.)
I’m not sure what this means. Am I just being picky?
Update 7:48am: This post has just appeared in Google Reader, timestamped 7:33am. Nothing in Bloglines as yet. I’m not sure how long I’ll maintain this experiment (it’s kind of doing my head in to have to monitor not one, but two readers) – we’ll see.
11 Comments
No – not picky. As far as I’m concerned my post was VITAL news that EVERY PARENT needed to know IMMEDIATELY. And the rest of the population should be grieving too.
I was griping about it to the Co-Pilot yesterday. He muttered about there being “too many layers between you and your data”…the feedburner feed and bloglines being rather complex pieces of software that try to sing, dance and jump through hoops. Bears thinking about.
I’m giving bloglines a couple of days to pull its finger out, and then I’m outta there, baby. Like you, I prefer a web based reader…I could load portabel Thunderbird on a thumbdrive, but that just seems silly. A very timely post, thanks
I think it’s important to be able to get your feeds right away. If you have to wait half a day to a day for the feeds to update then you may well miss being able to participate in any conversation on topics that come up for that time.
As to why bloglines may be doing this. Doesnt blog software have minimum wait times before sending off update queries for RSS. This is to stop people from spamming RSS feed sites with new file requests. It could well be that bloglines has a minimum universal cooldown time before sending off a new RSS feed query and in the meantime is only showing you the cache version.
Thanks, Kathryn. I’m just glad the Yellow Wiggle now knows what’s ailing him, and can take steps to look after himself. It must have been very scary to be fainting for no apparent reason…
I’ll keep keeping an eye on Bloglines and Google Reader. Not sure what I’ll do. Do I really want to turn everything I do online over to the Google Empire?
Ooh M we must have been commenting at the same time 🙂 *Twilight Zone music*
I don’t know what’s been going on with Bloglines. Some weeks ago they released an upgrade which meant that updated feeds were displaying very quickly without you having to refresh the screen (you could sometimes watch the feeds update – if you had nothing better to do on a sleepy Thursday afternoon). Maybe this played havoc with their servers because now I’m noticing that these updates aren’t happening as frequently anymore. And all the issues with some feeds not updating at all started happening too.
Actually, I have been wondering the same thing as well when it comes to Bloglines. It seems updating has become terribly inconsistent. Not only do I not see things that I know or suspect have regular updates not update, but I have also seen it pick up a lot of old stuff after the fact. In other words, I read it, then see it picked up again. And I know it is not all a blogger that updated an old post. No word from Bloglines whatsoever. By the way, I did get curious as well and imported my Bloglines file to a Google reader. I will see how it goes. Was easier since I had the account that goes along with the Blogger Beta I have. Best, and keep on blogging.
Well, it seems like Bloglines is having some technical problems as I’ve read on a few blogs about people complaining non-updating of feeds on Bloglines. Guess you’ll have to wait out their teething problems for the time being.
Google Reader is definitely a worthy replacement. Have used a couple of times and it has been a happy experience.
Bloglines is just not working atm. I did some tests and some feeds I subscribed to were days or weeks old in their preview windows and in the subsequent subscriptions.
I tested Sage and Google reader and they both had no issues. Bloglines should definately be avoided at present imo.
I’ve also been having problems with Bloglines lately, and have been thinking of moving to Google reader. I’ve tried it before, and it’s also got some features that I like the look of.
Thanks for the experiment 🙂
Still keeping an eye on Bloglines and using Google Reader to test. So far nothing positive to report about Bloglines (ie nothing’s changed).
Another Bloglines quirk that has been happening to me for the past couple of months is when I click on “mark all new,” it doesn’t hold the posts. I’ll also give Google Reader a spin…I might want to migrate. I hope the blogging feature there is more than the bare-bones Bloglines blogging, which has been its greatest weakness to me.
Hi Jonathan, thanks for stopping by. I must confess I haven’t been paying Bloglines much attention since I wrote this post, I’ve been using Google Reader instead. It’s been working fine, and because I have been noting complaints from others I haven’t felt compelled to go back.
Only thing is that Google Reader doesn’t do blogs, as such, although it does have nice features, such as the ability to “star” posts, or share them (which creates a page similar to what Bloglines offers with its blogging feature). I suspect if you want fully-fledged blogging you will need to use Google’s Blogger 🙂