Pluck
One of the people who’s invited me to speak this fall asked if I could spend a few minutes on Pluck. Since I need a new aggregator and it looks interesting, I started playing with it.
Pluck integrates into the Firefox Web browser. Importing my OPML file was really easy. I can subscribe to more things in it than I can my current aggregator because it’s neither public nor attached to any of my weblogs. I don’t have to worry about loading it up with feeds related to news librarianship or professional development.
It’s not a desktop aggregator. An Internet connection is required to browse the aggregator’s content.
Being able to arrange feeds in folders is very nice. I don’t really like the split column on the left showing the folders above and the feeds below, though. I don’t understand the importance of having two separate windows. Why not use one window?
The help documentation is geared for people using Windows machines. It keeps telling me to right click on things.
I don’t particularly care for the ads for news sources in the right column. They take up some valuable space. Complete comics, for example, don’t appear in the aggregator–at least not Get Fuzzy. Readjusting the page helps a little to bring some of the comics into full view, but I have to click through to the Web site to read the Sunday comics. Manila shows the entire strip.
The aggregator has an option to subscribe users automatically to certain preloaded feeds. I did not opt for that.
I have not tested feeds with enclosures with it.
When subscribing to a feed, it gives you a box to enter what you’d like to call the feed and under which folder you’d like it to be. Handy! It immediately solves the problems of titleless feeds.
So far, I like it, but the more I play with it, the more I think I’d prefer a desktop aggregator. I’ve realized I need to do some more pondering to decide what I’d really like in the way of aggregators.
Pluck does more than just aggregation, but I haven’t tinkered too much with its other features (yet).
Addendum: One of the things I don’t particularly like about it is how there doesn’t seem to be a way to view the content of all of the new feeds, like I can currently do with Manila’s aggregator. It seems like I have to scroll through the folders, then pick one feed to view its content. It seems like a lot of unnecessary navigation, especially to someone with limited movement.
I also haven’t figured out why the feeds haven’t updated for today yet. I have the preferences set to check for updates hourly. I also keep manually selecting “Update Feeds,” but nothing seems to be updating.
