Some Thoughts on Offline Aggregators
First, I know some eyes are popping about the number of unread items in my aggregator being more than 1100 when I first set up the aggregator. Since the aggregator is new (it still has that new aggregator smell), it doesn’t have any memory of what I’ve already read, so it downloaded everything that’s in a source’s feed. For some items, the material spans several months. I’ll be very shocked if daily updates net me 1100+ new items.
One of the reasons why I want a desktop aggregator is so that it’s easier for me to work offline. A second reason is so that I can subscribe to feeds I don’t necessarily want people to know I read. I probably wouldn’t have thought much about privacy related to what I read had someone not made some observations to me about how he doesn’t want people to know he subscribes to a weather feed because it indicates where he lives. I like having a public aggregator where I can share feeds I think my blog’s readers might find useful. I also know several people read my aggregator regularly. But going offline means I can subscribe to more things that don’t relate to this weblog, are feeds of friends (some of whom don’t want 4500+ strangers learning about their blog), and might reveal things I don’t necessarily want to broadcast to the world, like where I live or what I’m receiving in an e-mail inbox.
Now, I find myself in several dilemmas. One is that I like participating in Share Your OPML, a place where people can share lists of what they subscribe to. But since I’m reading things in my offline aggregator I don’t necessarily want others to see, I don’t have an easy way to share that list of subscriptions. NetNewsWire Lite lets me export selected feeds. Maybe I should go through what I’m reading now to create a list I can share via SYO. I also like the idea of being able to create subscription lists for others based on what I read.
Another dilemma, of course, is which aggregator do I read? I’m still trying frantically to zero out NetNewsWire. The scratchpad’s aggregator is a digest in comparison.
And still another is related to now being able to see a number of unread items. “Gosh, just how much time do I spend reading these feeds?!? What if there are hundreds of items each day?”
