Robyn DeuPree, the Bloglines Product Manager, announced new features for the service today and asked for feedback. The additions are keystroke navigation, unread vs. keep as new, mobile and universal inbox. Since I don’t use the mobile interface, my response doesn’t apply to it. Short answer: wow, totally unimpressive.
Actually, since none of these features are useful to me I shouldn’t have excluded mobile. Seriously, there’ve been about zero new features for about 12 months, even though Bloglines was bought out by deep pocketed InterActiveCorp, and this is the best that could be done for the first release of the new regime? I’m still waiting for news on the bug I reported a couple of months ago, that read items come up again as unread despite no visible changes. At the least they could have added a read but changed indicator (which, for example SharpReader has) to make that possibility visible.
The most laughable of the new features, and I mean I actually laughed when I read it, is the so-called “ginsu knives of Bloglines…” the Universal Inbox. What warrants such a lofty name? “We’ve partnered with Astrology.com to deliver daily, weekly and monthly horoscopes, and Lottery.com to bring you lottery winning numbers and jackpot values for any state in the USA.” I realize that RSS use is spreading beyond the techie community, which is great, but the idea that Bloglines thinks lottery results and horoscopes are the highest value adds at this time is hilarious.
BillSaysThis 