Derek Bodner’s Blog

I’m not really one that’s much for “web 2.0″ apps. I prefer a desktop e-mail client. I don’t like to edit my spreadsheets in google docs, I’d much rather use OO.o, gnumeric, or even Microsoft Office. I find vendor lockin to these “apps” to be far worse than for desktop apps, and most of the times they don’t have the functionality I want. I do feel that Web2.0 apps have a place and a need, even in my warped sense of the world, however. They should be there to enhance desktops apps moreso than replace them.

E-mail’s the best example of this. With an IMAP account, I can access my e-mail from anywhere, while still maintaining the customizability of how I want to view it to the desktop client. There are countless Thunderbird extensions I can use to customize the look and feel, and even the functionality of the app if my needs change. A webmail interface can never replace a desktop e-mail client for me. Even if I find one that has ALL the functionality I want, and that has a good enough look, feel, and notification that I can use it to replace a desktop app, the vendor lockin kills it for me. While if Thunderbird development gets stale I can quickly switch over to evolution or any other client that support IMAP. If gmail development gets stale, there’d be a much more significant resistance to move.

However, as I said, there is a place for Web2.0 apps. While I want to use a desktop email client on the computers I work at daily (desktop, laptop, work computer), having a good web interface that fits my needs is also a great thing in case I’m on the road and have to borrow someone’s computer. I could dig gmail, if it was a fallback option. But since gmail doesn’t allow IMAP connections, it’s not of much value to me.

RSS is another one of those “Web2.0″ (I hate that phrase) apps that I’ve been fighting with. I like using Thunderbird (or various other desktop RSS readers I’ve tried) moreso than the web applications I tried, but it gets extremely hard when you’re using so many computers, as keeping them in sync gets to be tedious. For a while I used a heavily-modified feeds on feeds (before fofredux started) which somewhat satisfied me, but I ended up not checking it very often, and when I would go to read the articles, there would be too many and I’d end up ignoring them (RE: mark all as read without actually looking at any). What I ended up doing was going back to a desktop reader, and only really running one at work.

Today I decided to take another look, and looked at Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader) and Bloglines Beta (http://beta.bloglines.com). I think I’ve finally found something I can live with.

I didn’t care too much for Google Reader. It didn’t feel all that snappy, and the interface just isn’t there. I do like being able to star items and read it later (saving into the “Starred items” folder), but that alone wasn’t enough to win me over. I’ve just never been a fan of Google’s interface for things, but overall the product seemed usable.

Then I tried Bloglines Beta. Most of the features are probably “inspired” by Google Reader, but it feels better implemented. The new start page is a great timesaver, the folder layout on the left hand navigation seems crisper, and the AJAX is actually useful.

There are two main gripes I have, but I think I’m going to continue to use this (for the time being at least). First, I’d like to be able to view all unread, which doesn’t currently exist in bloglines beta. Well, it could work, but you’d have to put all your feeds in one folder, which takes away the primary purpose of the folders. Second, there’s a 3rd party desktop notification I found for gnome (and subsequently xfce) based desktops, which works fine. But it only tells you when you have unread feeds (and how many). I’d like something like checkgmail, which will give you a quick synopsis of what messages are unread. Just getting the notification is fine, but I’d like a little more.