I had written this very detailed post of what I liked and disliked about BlogMatrix Jager, but my TypePad QuickPost page decided to ignore every word I typed and send them to wherever it is electrons go to pasture.
So I'll be quick this time around. And I'll remember to copy everything before pressing "SAVE."
I switched from Bloglines to NewsGator Online because I liked the NewsGator interface better. Then a couple of days ago I decided to try NewsGator Outlook Edition, since I use Outlook 2003 a lot and recently returned to it after trying Thunderbird. Ironically, using NewsGator Outlook Edition made me realize that what I really want is an unobtrusive RSS organizer that lets me read my posts in my default browser (Firefox). Which has led me away from NewsGator Online to try (for the second time) an RSS organizer called BlogMatrix Jager.
BlogMatrix is almost perfect, but still has some very annoying quirks:
1. I've found no way to list ONLY unread posts. I get a list of about five posts, new ones in blue, read ones in gray. I'd rather not see those I've read - unless I explicitely decide to.
2. Categories show a number in parenthesis next to them. You'd think this number indicates the number of new posts for each category, but no - it indicates how many blogs are inside the category. Kind of useless if you ask me.
3. You can collapse categories, but you can't collapse blogs. And blogs don't have the number in parenthesis indicating the number of new posts.
4. The language used in the menus is very non-standard. What does "Skip After Reading" mean, for example? Well I tried... it means that after opening a post inside a blog, the blog disappears from the list even if you still had unread items in the blog.
5. It's supposed to synchronize with your Bloglines account. So far all I get are "Caught exception" messages. Whatever that means.
On the good side:
1. Import OPML works very well. Unfortunately there's no easy way to export your feeds from NewsGator Online, so I had to use my old Bloglines account for that. What is it with vendors locking users into their software? Greg Reinacker from NewsGator has kindly stopped by and shown me how to generate an OMPL list. Read the comments for more info.
2. Clicking on a category title or blog title will open a nicely formatted webpage listing all posts within said category or blog. It will even split them into several pages if too long. It'd be nice to be able to select if you want everything in one page, or each blog on its own individual page. Right now you have to live with whichever way BlogMatrix decides to split your posts.
3. Filters, Watch lists, etc. If you take your time to set this up, Blogmatrix can be very powerful.
4. Price: The price seems right. You can either not pay - and put up with some annoying pop-ups throughout the day, or pay as much as you want - from $5 to $20.
Try it... you may like it.
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