The New Bloglines Web Services API

Marc Hedlund writes "Bloglines, everyone's favorite RSS aggregator, changed the RSS world again today by releasing the Bloglines Web Services APIs. FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, and Blogbot will all be adding support for the APIs so that users can store their feed state on Bloglines, and read their feeds from any browser. I posted an article introducing the APIs, including a full three-pane desktop aggregator source code example, on the the O'Reilly site."

Re:Losers

[kinrowan]

While this may be a highly enlightened point of view, it's also important to note that RSS feed aggregators like Bloglines offer much, much more than subscribing simply to blogs. The name of Bloglines is misleading; my account feeds me some blogs, but also lots of other great content.

Re:Losers

[fiftyLou]

Whatever fuck bloggers

That you Dan Rather?

My favorite RSS aggregator is:

[Giant Ape Skeleton]

The Mozilla Thunderbird mail client.

I just installed the newest preview release and was floored to discover that it's got an RSS aggregator built right in!

You can set up subscriptions to your favorite feeds just and get them refreshed with your mail and newsgroups.

Pretty danged nifty, IMHO

Tip for reading posts with cookies in Thunderbird

[dn15]

On a related note, I've noticed most RSS clients have no support for cookies. Bad news if you read blogs that have friends-only posts which you can only view when logged in.

But with Thunderbird there is a workaround for it. Just copy cookies.txt from your Firefox or Mozilla profile folder into your Thunderbird profile! Then you'll be able to see all the posts you have permission to view, not just public ones. Just make sure you have set an option to remain logged for future sessions before copying the fil

Re:Tip for reading posts with cookies in Thunderbi

[yelvington]

Great tip. However, I still regard it as a bug in Thunderbird that it does not properly interoperate with Firefox, including cookies. I'd report it as a bug if I could find my way to the right Bugzilla.

Re:Tip for reading posts with cookies in Thunderbi

[dn15]

I agree. I'd like to see something like an "Import Firefox cookies for this site" option when adding a new subscription in Thunderbird. The current workaround is functional but certainly not ideal.

Not everyone's favorite....

[kinrowan]

Personally I prefer Feedster. It doesn't force me to look at my feeds one feed at a time.

If I want to see what's new, I want to see the newest stuff across my feeds, not have to click each feed to view the newest posts for each one separately. Unless I've missed something on Bloglines it doesn't offer me this view.

That said, these APIs might convince me to roll my own aggregator for my own use....

Re:Not everyone's favorite....

[josephscott]

You can see all of the new entries across your feeds by clicking on the folder above the list of feeds.

Re:Not everyone's favorite....

[kinrowan]

Aye, that you can, but they're still grouped by feed, not by datetime posted.

I should've been more clear what I wanted, but Bloglines still isn't it.

I still think homebrewed is the way to go

[Fo0eY]

I'm a bit of a news junky, but bouncing around checking all the different news sites whenever something happens is just to time consuming

Even more fun is when you're trying to remember that article you read last week, but is now lost in the oblivion that is anything not on the front page of the news site

so i threw together a little site that dumps all my favorite sites newsfeeds into a database where I can do whatever I want with it

though it's nowhere near as fully featured as I'd like, it does the job
al

Re:I still think homebrewed is the way to go

[costas]

Well, in that case you may ne interested in memigo; granted, it's not as customized as a home-brew solution, but it offers a boat-load of features including custom RSS feeds, RSS feeds of your browsing history, keyword searching of read articles, related news articles, PDA views, etc, etc, etc... check it out (end of shameless plug). [memigo.com]

Actually

[samael]

My favourite RSS aggregator is Livejournal.

I get all my news, links and comics there, courtesy of RSS.

And I can get to them anywhere there's a web connection.

Actually

[Shadwell]

...had you read the article or checked out the Bloglines site, you would've seen that Bloglines _IS_ a web-based aggregator.

Re:Actually

[samael]

Yup. I know that. I just like Livejournal, especially as I use it for keeping track of my friends anyway.

RSS client beefs, and why I don't use Bloglines

[Earlybird]

Bloglines is, mostly, great. It does at least one thing right: it views feeds inline, blog/Slashdot-style.

I am one of those readers to whom reading by headline is practically impossible: I read by viewing the content in the aggregate, not by actually reading every headline.

None of the three-pane readers work for me, then. They force me to click on a headline, read its contents. Then click on another one, then read that.

Nobody writes good headlines. So when the mass of information reaches a certain lev

Re:RSS client beefs, and why I don't use Bloglines

[cygnusx]

If you're handy with a scripting language, I'd recommend AmphetaDesk [disobey.com] or Radio Userland [userland.com]. Both run as HTTP daemons so any browser can connect. And both can be hacked to present the list any way you want (AmphetaDesk via Perl and Radio via UserTalk). Search for the free Radio 7 if you don't feel like paying for the non-free Radio 8.

Re:RSS client beefs, and why I don't use Bloglines

[Earlybird]

I am handy with scripting languages, but I don't really have the patience to tweak something like this. Does AmphetaDesk behave like I want?

Re:RSS client beefs, and why I don't use Bloglines

[cygnusx]

Not exactly. Ampheta's default interface [disobey.com] looks like Radio's -- it has full feed text but not DHTML click-to-collapse/Mark Read. Worse, its X button removes that feed from your sub list.

There is another skin [sunpig.com], but it's frames-based and defeats the your original requirement IMO.