Pluck’s Dead - I Need Help With Finding A New RSS Feed Aggregator !
I came home last night to find out that Pluck, my FORMER RSS feed aggregator has been down for two days.
They are not responding to pleas for help on their forum.
I called their office and got no answer.
They don’t respond to support requests.
Look like another dot-bomb. Sadly. Unfortunately.
I’m not in the frame of mind needed to do a lot of thinking, so could you tell me which service or software product you use and why I should use it ?
I had over 100 feeds that I watched, so without the ability to export them, it looks like I’ll be starting from scratch. Again.
Thanks for your help.
Edit - My server logs indicate that 78 visitors, so far this month, use Bloglines and only 13 use NewsGator. Means nothing specific to me, just facts.
I’ve tried twice to setup a free account at Bloglines and their email will not come thru to me.
THAT does mean something to me, like use something else knucklehead !
EDIT x 2 - 8:31 am Monday, AUG 21 - Oh great … now Pluck has come back to life and I’ll have to choose whether to complete the overhaul or give ‘em another chance.
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
You might give Newsgator a try - I’ve been using it for a few years and absolutely love it. It provides a number of options, from a free web-based aggregator to fee (reasonable, IMHO) based solutions including a stand-alone desktop aggregator (in Mac and Windows flavors) to an outlook plugin to a mobile phone aggregator. Best of all, they all sync with each other.
How about Bloglines or Newsgator, both of which are free and can be read online. Or how about switching to using the Firefox browser and subscribing that way? I use Bloglines, and I love the fact I can group things by category into folders, and clip them for later.
Good luck. Rebuilding your RSS can be tough, to be sure. You might want to back them all up as del.icio.us bookmarks, with a special tag so you know what they are. It wouldn’t be automated, but might still be helpful.
Thanks Doug and Phil. I have both of those listed as one’s to look at, but was waiting for some real world opinions.
Kinda like going to see ‘Snakes On A Plane’, which my wife tells me I’m doing afterwhile !
I’ve always preferred Newsgator over Bloglines myself although from my own site i notice there are more reading my feed via bloglines for what it is worth.
Mike,
I prefer NewsGator Online over Bloglines by a country mile - I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Real world experience: I’ve been using NG Online for 18 months now, with probably 300+ feeds and it’s been down maybe twice in that time.
It’s simple and does a simple job. That’s all I need, no bells and whistles. The user interface is clean unlike Bloglines (and that counts if you spend a lot of time on it).
With Bloglines, when I always come to it (sometimes I think I must be stupid or something, seeing that many more use it) I end up getting one big giant headache.
I think there’s this perception around Bloglines as that it is THE tool for the people in the know - NewsGator seems to always be snickered at.
NewsGator any time, mate.
Dear NewsGator: I’ll accept payment for said advertorial within 7 days.
Thanks Greg ! The same seems to be true for my server logs too.
Martin ol’ buddy, I saw your testimonial over there and was going to email you when I got back from seeing Snakes On A Plane.
Thanks for beting me to the punch and for the info.
Since I’ve now tried twice to get Bloglines to send me an email to click on to open a free account and twice it hasn’t come - I give up and am heading over to NewsGator to get the Premium service.
I just started a blog for a corporation I work with and NewsGator will work well with their Outlook and they can get an enterprise server package, so that looks like the clear cut winner.
Thanks for all the help guys and I’ll take more comments and tips from all who can add to this conversation.
Surprised you’re having problems getting a response from Bloglines…did you check your spam boxes?
Sure, Bloglines isn’t the prettiest or most Web 2.0ish, but it works and it works well.
Hey Duncan,
What puts me over the line with NewsGator is that I can sync up both online and offline use. When my broadband connection packs it in for the odd hour I still have access to what I’ve got in my Outlook via NG.
Don’t dump on the “prettiness” factor
- personally, when I’n using a reader for hours on end, a nicer (or simplier) user interface to look at helps.
Hey Duncan - I use MailWasher Pro - every email makes it thru to my control panel where it’s marked by me as friend or foe.
After that the email from a domain is handled by how I marked it the first time thru - as in, friend and it’s whitelisted or foe and every email from that domain from now on is toast.
That primer was for anyone not familiar with MailWasher Pro - whereas I’m sure duncan is familiar with that product.
I never received an email and when I tried to login anyway, with the user name and password I’d chosen, their reply was that I needed to click on an email to show I was a real person. I asked for another email and never got it either.
I’m kinda over them now…moved on. Their system didn’t respond well, didn’t work and I gave it two chances. That’s enough in today’s world - either you work the first time or two or you’re bypassed forever.
Hey Martin - The ability to use NewsGator in many different variations is quite impressive. I’m going to give them a shot, not award the victory as of yet.
If they have a great product, they now have my attention - but results are really all that matters.
Mike … Too damn right you shouldn’t award the victory yet.
For now, they’ve got my attention and as long as it keeps working and they don’t muck around with it they’ll have it.
Would love to see a review on it after you’ve used it for a week or so.
I’ll surely be a happy camper if it’s all it appears to be, Martin.
And I’ll be glad to let the world know what I think is the best part of their solution to my problem.
I’ve found netvibes to be a great RSS aggregator.
Its all packed with AJAX-y goodness so you can move things around, but I find its tremendously useful to actually move your feeds around for a more visually appealing reader.
What’s great about it is that you can also add notes, widgets and so on.
Thanks Tony - I’m unfamiliar with that one, so I’ll have to do some research.
I appreciate your investing of time with us.
No problems Mike — you know how it is.
First time caller/ commenter, long time lister/ reader.
Mike,
Netvibes is amazing and free. You can do so much with this tool. The obvious is reading RSS feeds (using a nifty pop-up window). You can incorporate a lot of other tools though as well. Gmail check. Weather. Notes to self. Link to your Writely account, if you have one. You can categorize your feeds into tabs.
I’ve been using it for 6 months or more, and it keeps getting better.
I gotta second that notion from Brandon.
I didn’t want to say too much at first, but Netvibes really isn’t “just” an RSS feed reader.
With all the widgets you can install, you’ll also scan the weather, your calendar, your email, all at the same time.
This can be done because most or not all of those things can be rebroadcast as an RSS feed.
I personally have a great interest in “GTD” (Getting Things Done), and I keep my own notes on a different tab.
http://www.netvibes.com/
http://eco.netvibes.com/ (for all of them widgets and so on.
Cheers
t
Thanks Brandon & Tony -
My only bit of worry is that Pluck was also free and look at what happened to them.
I’m thinking that a paid service/software is a better choice for the long-term.
Do you believe that eventually you’ll get what you pay for ?
Mike,
Meh - I don’t necessarily agree that you’ll get better service with a paid account. I pay for my web hosting and I’m having trouble left and right whereas when I had free hosting I had no trouble at all…
I’ve been using Bloglines now for about two years and have never had any trouble using it. I do like how you can organize blogs into folders by subject.
Never used NewsGator so I can’t give you a good comparison, sorry!
I haven’t actually used NetVibes for quite a while now - so it’s interesting to go back to it and see how it’s going - and it looks to be going quite well - lots of community around it.
But I don’t think it’s what Mike is looking for - if I’m assuming he wants a fairly heavy-duty rss reader.
It’s very ajaxy, clean and easy to use but I see it more as my home page everytime I start up Firefox - I can have a quick glance at some news, sports and weather and a few blogs … and then I move on.
BTW, I like the tabs feature at NetVibes - geez, I must have used it when it first came out. I better go back and take a closer look.
Hey guys,
Just spending some down time over at NetVibes and shit .. I’m impressed. NetVibes has been seriously flying under the radar.
My only fear with such a service is if can they handle the scale involved in growing big.
So far, I’m impressed and these days with a thousand and one apps, it’s hard to get impressed. It’s also got an awesome third-party app community.
I just wonder how they’re going to monetize it.
Heck: This is becoming a post within a comment - I should write this on my own blog .. cya
Thanks Maria - I understand that sometimes ( very rarely ) free is worthwhile, but my internet luck has been poor with free and average with a paid service/software.
As for hosting, I completely understand. We just had to move a new friend to our seerver/hosting business from another host this weekend.
Her blog was down more than it was up.
If you ever need a host, shoot me an email and I’ll show you our service.
Hey Martin -
You’re right, I need a badboy service and RSS reader. I downloaded a trial of NewsGator yesterday and so far, so good.
The fact that I can integrate with my corporate Outlook is great, but I rarely blog from the office, mostly at night, since I’m on the road most of the day. But you never know when that will change.
I’m thinking that you’re getting more from this than I am ! ‘Course that’s what this is all about, isn’t it ?
Enjoy, my friend, enjoy. And if it causes a brainstorm that leads to some posts over at ePub, well, all the better.
Oh great - now Pluck’s come back to life. At least I can try to export my old feeds.
Now I’ll have to choose whether to go thru this great amount of hassle or give ‘em another chance.
[...] ! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ NetVibes is Shit Hot - In a round about way (through commenting at a Mike Sigers post) I came back and fell in love with NetVi [...]
I am a Bloglines user and prefer it.
Chances are you remembered to backup the data on our hard drives .. but we often forget to backup our data online - MySql databases, OPML file (RSS Feeds) .. etc
If Bloglines went down, I sure wouldn’t want to recreate the 1317 feeds that are currently being monitored in my account. There’s just too many of them, and many search feeds that I wouldn’t want to recreate. I usually try to export my feeds every friday with my other backup procedures.
And, PS for anybody using Bloglines that does not know how to do it.. the easiest way is:
1) go to MY FEEDS
2) click EDIT
3) Scroll down to the bottom and import or export subscriptions
Export gives you a backup to your local drive - and import can bring your PLUCK feeds into Bloglines (as an example) so if one site is down, at least you have a backup.
// Just my 2 cents!
Thanks HART.
Every tidbit and tip that adds to the conversation is appreciated.
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