WIUWIU (why I use what i use) – Bloglines Feed Reader

bloglinesIf you read more than a few blogs each day, then you have probably realized it’s hard to keep up if you are forced to visit each and every site, just to see if they have new content. I have tried many applications to wrangle the dozens of feeds I read everyday. Google Reader, Microsoft’s Outlook® , NewsGator’s Feed Demon  are just a few of the aggregators that can be found on the web. They all have their little quirks and one or two features that the others do not have, and all are free except MS Outlook. Of all of the readers out today I can truly say Bloglines works the best for my reading habits. 

One of the frustrating things about most feed readers is the problem of clutter on the screen as you are trying to view your feeds. Bloglines has a simple, clean, familar interface. Your blog feeds are listed in a panel on the left hand side of the screen, similar to other applications such as email clients. Each blog name listed is followed by bloglines_counts2 numbers. The first number, which is bold as is any feed with unread posts, reflects the number of unread posts for that feed. The second number, which is slightly grayed out, is the number of posts you have elected to save. Clicking on the feed name displays the posts in a window to the right. Under each post you have the ability to quickly Email or Save the post. This retains the post in your Bloglines account so you can come back and see the post listed below the current posts. You may also Clip the post to your clippings folder (handy for those items which relate to a certain subject – perfect for studying) or Blog about the post to your free Bloglines hosted blog. 

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These are just a few of the features that make Bloglines worth taking a look at. 

Have experience with feed readers? Tell us about them in the comments.

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