Mobile Blog Reading Poll
I had the pleasure of speaking last Friday with Mark Fletcher and Robyn Deupree of Bloglines about a variety of topics include mobile blog reading, the Bloglines API, and Berry Bloglines.
I was impressed by interest taken by the Bloglines crew in listening to their users and in staying ahead of the curve on different ways to read blogs. I promised to survey my readers, to help provide feedback on what features are most valuable to mobile blog readers, and to provide input to improving and extending the Bloglines API.
For example, one request is that I’ve heard repeatedly from users is for the ability to keep a message as new even after the other messages in the feed have been marked as read. This is currently not possible via the Bloglines API.
So, mobile blog readers, this is your chance to influence mobile blog reading for the better. Please add comment to this message with your answers in the following areas:
(1) What features would you most like to see added to your mobile blog reader?
(2) How often do you read blogs while mobile?
(3) How important are full articles versus summaries?
(4) How important is offline support for you?
(5) What application(s) do you use to read blogs while mobile?
(6) What device(s) do you use to read blogs while mobile?
(7) Anything else you’d like to share
I’ll collect the results and post a summary.
3 Comments so far
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Many thanks indeed for giving us the opportunity to get our desires heard.
My list would be (in priority order) :
1 - Ability to ‘Read all’. Very useful when I have several blogs with a few entries each
2 - Ability to ‘Keep new’ and reflect the status in the standard (1:2) format
3 - offline capability for when there is poor connection
4 - Access to comments links (this would be heavily mitigated by having a keep new since I could then read the comments on a computer)
5 - background auto sync so that my offline cache is up to date
I use Berry Bloglines at least 3 times a day and read Bloglines on a computer otherwise.
I use mobile blog ready while commuting and so cannot guarantee connection so request my blogs before I leave home/office - an offline cache with an auto sync would be fantastic although I realise the blackberry has limited memory - I used Avantgo a lot before blogs. For this reason, I find summaries useless but understand that others do not, so a user-definable option would be very handy.
Overall, Berry Bloglines has pretty well covered one of the core pieces of functionality from when I left the world of PDAs.
Thanks.
By ChrisPyLord on 12.05.05 3:06 pm
(1) What features would you most like to see added to your mobile blog reader?
offline support
(2) How often do you read blogs while mobile?
every day
(3) How important are full articles versus summaries?
full summaries are very important
(4) How important is offline support for you?
very important. i want to be able to read in the subway and have my stuff re-synced when i come above ground. presumably would be great for people that fly as well.
(5) What application(s) do you use to read blogs while mobile?
blackberry browser and the mobile bloglines interface.
(6) What device(s) do you use to read blogs while mobile
blackberry 9270
(7) other ….
would be great if i could post the url to my delicous account directly. or other - maybe an open place where it is configurable.
By derek on 12.05.05 3:20 pm
Good poll phil. I check blogs religiously on my blackberry. Currently I have book marked both technorati and blogsearch.google.com
google seems to be more up-to-the minute in their updates.
By jasongoldberg on 12.06.05 9:36 pm
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