1. I am doing research on blogging (I have to be in the middle of the heat and stay up-to-date right?)

2. I am an information junkie (I want to know what’s happening and where and why and I want to know it all!)

To organize my feeds I started out with Feedreader, but in November it was time to try some new programs which I wrote about in a post titled “Review: Feedreader, Google Reader, Bloglines, Thunderbird RSS Reader.” In a comment Fabian suggested trying Netvibes and I have been using it ever since. Netvibes is an Ajax portal (refreshed feeds on the spot) which is completely customizable in the way it looks and how feeds are displayed. It allows me to keep my scattered digital self in once place with Google Mail, del.icio.us, MySpace and tons of other modules. You can drag and drop your feeds and modules and make different pages with tabs to keep everything sorted by topic. BusinessLogs actually lists Netvibes in their top 10 “The Web’s Best Interface Design.”

Every page or blog you visit which has a RSS feed can easily be added to Netvibes using their Firefox extension. Just a click on a button and you are subscribed to the feed and it will display on your Netvibes page. I love it. The only downside is, that because it is so easy I ended up subscribing to more stuff that I could actually keep up with. So this morning it was time for some housekeeping. I unsubscribed from dozens of feeds I hardly read anymore by simply clicking the close button. I am better organized now and I hope I can keep my finger off the Netvibes button to add more feeds :)

Since Firefox 2 came out I started using their new option the Firefox Live Bookmark. Instead of static bookmarks you can now subscribe to pages with dynamic content such as blogs. However, I don’t like the display, look, feel and handle of the Live Bookmarks e.g. it just displays the header title.

So it’s time for something new which I have narrowed down to three options:

1. Google Reader. Even though I love Google’s services I don’t use Gmail because I want to keep my e-mail on my own computer and I love e-mail privacy. Plus I can’t get used to the (conversation-like) interface, which the Google Reader is based on. At a first glance it looks nice, clean, user-friendly (importing my Feedreader bookmarks was easy) and did I mention nice and clean?
2. Bloglines. Wow, messy! Especially if you just arrived from the Google Reader interface. Adding the icon files to the feed titles surely makes it a more graphical experience, but it looks like a logo overkill. Plus the fact that my own webpage feed doesn’t show up right doesn’t quite make it a first positive experience. Let’s hope that the Firefox 2 plug-in improves my Bloglines experience. Oh hey! There aren’t Firefox 2.0 compatible yet. Well that kind of ends my Bloglines experience right here.
3. Thunderbird RSS integration.
   I never fully realized my much beloved e-mail program had an integrated RSS reader. I knew it somewhere in the back of my head, but never looked into it. Well now it is time. It looks nice and clean again and I love the way it displays the pages. The only thing that I would like is that it would show a summary of the post instead of only the title. Also adding a new feed takes a few steps in contrast to Feedreader, Google Reader and Bloglines, but it does have the advantage that it is integrated in my e-mail program so no need for external software/webpage.

I will keep you updated with my reading experiences.