Feedlounge Review
I talked about Feedlounge a while ago. It was announced earlier this week that the application would be moving away from it’s Beta stage into a public release sometime next week. So I thought it’s might prudent that I give everyone a bit of a proper review for this little online application.
As you might or might not know Feedlounge is an application that allows you to read your RSS feeds. What’s an RSS feed you ask? In short it’s a link from a website. You download that specific link and paste it into your Feed reader. There are many feed readers all over the place. From desktop applications, to ones that intergrate with your browser, to ones that live online. These applications check the RSS feed, and if the website has been updated it actually returns all sorts of information (depending on how the owner of the website has decided to format his RSS feed).
So without ever having to visit a website you can keep up to date and maximise your reading experience.
I’ve been using Sage exclusively for about a year and a half or whatever. It’s been a great little addition to Firefox and has served me well. However the experience has been less than fun lately. Using Feedlounge I see that I’ve actually been missing out a great deal.
The Good
Interface One of the nicest thing about the application is the interface. The gradients used are subtle. The text is nice and clear. Everything is well laid out, but the guys have anticipated the fact that people have different reading habits and so they've included 3 different layouts.
Features There have been a couple of new features since I last checked up on it. I’m not sure if they’ve been added since I first looked at it, or rather I just didn’t notice it the first time round.
Unread Items. Grouping the unread feeds is very cool (remember I’ve been using Sage).
Tags addition. All applications that store elements in anyway, SHOULD HAVE TAGS. They’re words you associate with a specific post of feed item. The tags can span different websites/blogs.
Flagging. I’ve actually wanted to be able to highlight things that I’ve enjoyed reading or provides some sort of link or whatever for a while now, so the fact that you can flag an item is something very very useful indeed.
History. That’s also a nice element that I’ve not been able to use due to using Sage. Scrolling through the last week’s worth of feeds, highlighting when I’ve read them is a great little addition to my reading experience.
The overlay menus. I actually like these because they don’t hinder your experience. There’s no clicking between pages as you do in most web-centered applications. Everything goes cloudy and the main element is brought to the forefront. I live that idea mainly because it doesn’t disrupt my experience which is what these guys are effectively selling…which nicely brings me to the bad.
The Bad
No Manual Refreshing This one is a bit annoying but I guess that's part of the way things go. I'm used to actually deciding when to refresh and see if there's any new stuff. Unfortunately it's done automatically which is not the end of the world, but it's just annoying for me.The Price Everything has a price. Feedlounge is not free, which is a shame really because I would have liked to pay for it, however $5 a month seems a bit much for what I’m getting. If they’d come back and said to me it costs $3 a month (maximum I’d effectively pay for a service like this), I’d have signed up in an instant, now I’ve got to actually think about it.
I’ve got to think about it because it’s a really well put together program. The thing is though it’s not something that is helping me produce anything. It’s not something that is helping me collaborate on anything, store something. It’s effectively a program that helps me read stuff in a nicer way. I dunno part of me feels that my $5 a month should be spent on something else. I’ve honestly got to think about this further.