unwiredben

For the last few years, I've been using Bloglines as my main blog aggregator. It's worked fairly well, but earlier this week I found out about some security holes that have been unfixed on the site for months. That bugged me. Then, earlier today, I saw a reference to NewsGator Online, a competitor that has much better integration with offline newsreaders, allowing you to read feeds from different locations but keep your "read list" in sync.

I tried them out. After a little OPML editing to remove a layer of "outline" that wasn't needed, they imported my Bloglines data without any issues, and the UI of their service is pretty good. I like that it's not using frames, and the "collapse a site's entries" buttons work quite well. My only complain is that there wasn't a way I could mark the feeds I'd just imported as "completely read", but it looks like that's a common request, so I think it will be in the system sooner rather than later.

They have good mobile browsing support, something I've already tried from my Treo. The paid version is $20/year, and I'm happy to pay for this -- it's better to be a customer than a freeloader when you've got a critical application, in my opinion. They have a well staffed support forum (something Bloglines has been missing for a while), and there seems to be a lot of momentum to make their service better.

My only other complaint is that their site is a bit slow. Bloglines has had slow periods, but never this bad. However, it looks like they're in the middle of switching to new servers, so I'll cut them some slack.