8.

I'm really glad that this is one of our projects. I signed up for a news aggregator but never got around to using it. I know in my head that it would save me oodles of time, but I'm a habitual person, and couldn't stop myself from automatically typing in my URL routine everyday. Jeesh.

Originally I had signed up for newsgator.com. I liked the format and the design and found it pretty easy to use, but I went WAY overboard on the initial sign-up. I had like 50 feeds that all had 10 old messages to read. Talk about information overload.

This time around I signed up for bloglines.com and thought it was ok. I think that it's actually a bit more confusing and could be scaled down quite a bit. There is a lot of self-promotion on the site (and who really cares since I've already signed up for the stupid service?) and it would help them a lot if they simplified the site.

Another reason I like newsgator better is the headline function. It will take all of the recent headlines from a folder of RSS feeds (like "news" or something) and give you a quick peek at what people are writing about. It's really helpful when you are speeding through your news intake.

Blogline simply lists all the RSS feeds so you are required to actually select the feed to see what it going on. Some feeds are set up so that you only see the headline and then after selecting the link you will go to their website. But the blogs are harder to deal with. I found myself trying to find the time to read every single blog that sounded interesting. Too much. Also, the saving function on Blogline is a little complicated. It allows for lots of cool options (like copying the entire post and posting it to your own blog for your friends to see), but again, it could be so much easier. I feel like sometimes programmers are punishing their lazy fans by making them click a few more times than absolutely necessary. I hate that.