(Updated)
OK, this is Feed Reader Day – just as soon as I finishe complaining about Frustrating Feed Reader Problems (Bloglines and Attensa), a Reader discussion on the “River of News” view breaks out.
Attensa’s Scott Niesen came to my blog and left some good news (?) in a comment: apparently both major glitches are fixed in Attensa 1.5. Well, sort of. Ok, I was ready to ditch it, but decided to give it one more try, dowloaded the new version.
I suspected and I can confirm: I really don’t like the “River of News” view. Why? Because I already applied a filter in the first place, when selecting feeds, and I like to see the posts sorted under the blog name (author). Although Attensa does not do what I need out-of-the box, I worked out a pretty good system of managing my feed.
In the Attensa file (pst) all feeds (blogs) have their own folders , but I dont’ read them directly: instead I set up a search folder for unread in the Attensa file, and made this search folder a favorite which I read, while keeping the original Attensa folder collapsed.
This way the favorite folder always shows the number of unread feeds, they are properly grouped under Blog titles, and when I read one, it automatically disappears from the favorite (unread) list, as if I deleted it. I already achieved one of the “improvements” of the River model. If I want to go back to an already read post, I just pull it up from the main Attensa folder.
Works for me … except that I still have the frustrating image download problem, which apparently Attensa only fixed in the River View.
Related posts:
- Scobleizer
- Craig’s Lemonade (OK, I am p*d with Attensa, but he is a cute kid…)
- Dave Winer
- Kevin Marks
- Jupiter Research
- etc..etc..
Update (7/16): While not a generic River issue, just specific to Attensa, I think it’s fairly significant: the “river view” and the traditional folder view does not seem to recognize each other’s “read/unread” status. Whatever I read in folder view will be loaded again as new in the river view. This practically forces the users to make up their mind and stick to one view all the time, as switching between views creates redundant work.
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