So Much…
…for that experiment. I was trying out blo.gs as a way to ease my weblog reading. I probably read about 20-30 different weblogs. Initially I had organized my bookmarks in terms of the frequency with which I read them: Daily, Weekly, etc. But I found it cumbesome to keep digging through my bookmarks all the time. Blo.gs is well executed and seemingly exactly what I was looking for, an easy way to keep up on these blogs without the work.
But what I’ve found is that it works with mixed results. Some sites don’t have RSS/ATOM feeds, others don’t ping the blo.gs server. And I find that half the time I end up having to dig into my favorites anyway.
I’ve seen lots of people liken this to a Push/Pull analogy which I believe is somewhat true. But I don’t know that the Push way works. There is too much dependency on the user to setup their publishing tool to get this working right. I have MovableType setup to ping about 4 or 5 different sites that monitor site updates and more often than not, when publishing, one of the pings fails anyway. I’ve thought about RSS/ATOM readers too, but what if the site you read doesn’t have a feed?
There has to be a better way, and I’m going to try and think of one. Any suggestions would be welcome.