Google Reader vs Microsoft start.com
You know how I dissed Google Reader last month? Consider it still dissed. In fact, checking in again on Microsoft's start.com makes me think Google has a lot to learn about making a feed aggregator. I still prefer my own in-progress aggregator UI, but start.com has me thinking about ideas to steal.
Archived Comments
How does start.com differ from Google's personalized home page (I don't use either, but you've piqued my curiosity).
Well, from what I can tell versus Google's personalized home page, start.com seems more open to defining "Gadgets" along the lines of Widgets on Mac OS X Tiger. Though, that's really neither here nor there with respect to a "pure" feed aggregator. So, maybe start.com and Google Reader are apples and oranges to compare in the first place. (I have to admit I'd mostly forgotten about Google's personalized home page.)
But, the whole start.com UI thing just feels like a quicker, nicer presentation of feeds. I like the in-page detail overlay when you click on a headline, versus just skipping straight to the link. Google's UI feels pretty clunky to me.
Ah, the popup is kind of neat. I follow more than 250 feeds daily though. I need something like Reader (actually Reader wasn't fast enough, so I use NetNewsWire synced to Bloglines now).
Oh, yeah, start.com is a bit too slow for me too—but it's faster than Google Reader. Currently, my favorite UI for speed is my own:
http://www.decafbad.com/blog_attachments/miniagg-1.jpg
But, I've been trying to think of ways I could tile feeds into columns to maybe pack more per page in front of my eyes. (ala start.com)
I went from Bloglines to Googles for about 2 weeks, but I finally gave up on it, I just couldn't get used to the interface, and didn't like the way it that it just dumped the feeds at you without any order or control. I went back to bloglines for now, but I'd like to setup something on my own server.. (I picked up this really cool RSS book, just haven't had the time to read it yet.)