I've been meaning to post about how cool
Bloglines is for ages now. For anyone that doesn't know, Bloglines is a web based
RSS news feed reader - you
sign up on the site, login and add all your feeds. Bloglines then works in the backgroudn to grab all the latest news for you so the next time you come back to the site any new feeds since your last visit are ready to read. Bloglines also has really cool keyboard shortcuts so you don't even need to use a mouse to navigate in the browser - old news for anyone that uses bloglines regularly - I think they added shortcuts nearly a year ago now - but hey I still think it merits bigging up.
Generally I reckon web based RSS feed readers are the way to go. For a start, RSS feeds are usually output in XML and XML is perfect for rendering in a web browser (anyone heard of HTML?!). RSS feeds also generally have a lot of content that links to other websites, so if you're reading the feed in a web browser, jumping to that other linked site doesn't involve any extra overhead.
The coolest thing about Bloglines though is the keyboard shortcuts. I read my feeds whilst I'm brushing my teeth usually(!) - it usually takes me at least 5-10 minutes to read all the feeds, so it's like killing two birds with one stone, get really clean teeth whilst also getting a fix of fresh info :) However before the shortcuts it was hard navigating the bloglines interface with just my left hand (ever tried using your left hand with a mouse if you're right handed?).
Anyways, that's where the shortcuts come in. I fire up my browser and browse to bloglines and then I just need to hit the keystroke 'A m j' and I'm ready to rock - A is for opening every new feed at one time, m is for hiding the feed list to make it easier to read the feeds and j is for moving to the first new item. Once I'm there I can just use the page down key to browse through the feed items.
Also if there's anything I want to look at later - when I have both hands free! - I can mark those items by hitting 'j' or 'k' to move up/down to the item and then when I'm on the item I just hit 'n' to mark it as 'unread' or 'new'. That way when I come back later that item will still be there waiting for me to read it. Well smart.
I'd highly recommend Bloglines to anyone who hasn't tried it yet. About a year or two ago when I started reading feeds I spent quite a while looking for a decent standalone feed reader/aggregator. To cut a long story short, I couldn't find anything that was as good as the web based client Bloglines, so I've stuck with Bloglines ever since.
