I’ve been a huge fan of the online Google Reader ever since they launched the much needed redesign almost a year ago. Since then I think they’ve taken feed reading to a whole new level, and have drawn many users away from Bloglines.
Today Ask, who acquired Bloglines back in 2005, announced that Bloglines Beta is now available to the public. The great news is that the Beta was setup so that you can seamlessly switch between Bloglines Beta and the classic Bloglines, and any changes you’ve made in one account will show up in the other. As far as new features go there are quite a few that are notable:
- New look and layout that brings a bunch of AJAX goodness to your fingertips!
- Bloglines now has what I consider to be a built-in Netvibes. You can customize the new Bloglines Start Page with all of your favorite feeds, and it scales beautifully to fit the width of your browser.
- Reorganizing your feeds is as simple as dragging-and-dropping them.
And then there are three new views to read your feeds in:
- Quick-View: Browse your feeds only by their titles. This is one of the fastest tools I’ve seen for reading through large amounts of news.
- Full-View: This is essentially classic Bloglines, but there are a few enhancements.
- 3-Pane View: Think of 3-pane as a feed reader with an email application interface.
Right now I use FeedDemon (a non-free desktop app) to track all of my feeds, but picking between Google Reader and the new Bloglines Beta isn’t easy. The one thing that really sells me on the Bloglines now is the Start Page, which is super nice since you can put your favorite feeds there. Then anytime you go to read some news the first thing you’ll see is what’s most important.
You should also note that this is an early Beta, and more features are still expected a little bit later:
- Mobile – Bloglines on the cell phone (it’s already on the iPhone).
- Actions and activities involving a post – Save, Send, Share.
- Personalization Preferences – Edit a Feed or Settings.
- Creation of Disposable Email Addresses.
- Upgraded Developer APIs.
- Creation of a Link-Blog.
Putting Google Reader vs. Bloglines Beta is definitely tough right now, but if I had to crown a winner at this time I would still give the crown to Google. Although I’ve fallen in love with the drag-and-drop in Bloglines, as well as the customizable Start Page and resizable panes…none of which Google offers. So I’m kind of pulled in both directions right now. Who do you think is better?
I’m very impressed by the new Bloglines. And being a Google Reader user, I’m very tempted to switch.
However, at this point, I think Google Reader still has the edge. I like being able to instantly GMail an article to someone, and saving articles is a must…something the new Bloglines doesn’t yet have.
But Bloglines is back in the game, in my opinion.
Ive been a regular user of Rojo. But i think i will switch back to bloglines. The preview seems excellent.
I wouldn’t want to go up against Google in something, but its good to see Google Reader getting some competition.
As good as GR is, there is a huge amount of room for improvement in these web-based feed readers and competition should help us get there faster.
Does Bloglines allow you to search within your own feeds? The only feature Google Reader is missing, quite surprised its missing too, but I really miss being able to do it.
I’m really glad that Bloglines stepped up their game just for that reason. Google Reader is still better in my opinion, but Bloglines inching so close is going to force Google to add some innovation to their feed reader.
Yes, it does let you perform searches.
I am moving to an online reader and was checking out Google Reader which does not have the 3-Pane View I am used to. I am so now in love with the new Bloglines. Thanks for this review.