Web Based Aggregators have struck an high interest to me lately due to the increasingly slow Bloglines that I have been experiencing. I am not going to simply switch from using Bloglines, but I figured I would keep an eye out for some new aggregators to try. I have looked through atleast 30 - 40 Feed Readers this week, viewing the Ins and Outs of them. I now have my top three list.

Keeping my eye on Feed-Tank

Feed-Tank is, at the time of writing this, in Stage 2 of their Beta. I was using the aggregator during the Beta 1 stage as well, and I liked is then, but now, it has all this animation, AJAX, folksonomy, and the bells and whistles. It is kind of hard to see in the screenshot that I have provided, but, upon entering Feed-Tank and logging in, you will be presented with Popular Tags, Recent Feeds, Popular Feeds, and even Popular Articles. On the right (the green bar you see) you have your feed selection list. This is a fully draggable, transparent, fading, ajaxified (is that a word) bar that stays on top at all times. To the left of the bar is another box. This is where the entries will show up. They come up in their own box by starting on the left as a small rectangle and then scaling to full size. Pretty cool, but a little too much for me. For the developer if you are to see this: Love your progress made on Feed-Tank so far. I do however feel that the sliding of the entries area is a little too much when viewing a lot. Also, is it possible to make the entries box draggable? The feed list is, but it doesn’t have much room to go unless that box is movable as well.

Keeping my eye on Blox0r

I can easily say that Blox0r definitely has some of the best features I have seen yet in a web-based feed aggregator (for me atleast). First off, Blox0r is an XUL-based RSS and Atom feed aggregator for Firefox and other Mozilla/Gecko browsers. There are many things to say about Blox0r because of the options and customization that it is capable of, but I will try to keep it short. This aggregator looks just like your normal offline feed aggregator, infact, if you remove the title bar with the logo (which you have the option to), it makes it look as if it is even built into the browser itself. You have five available layouts to view your feeds in, which is great because I can now choose one and get comfortable with it. The format that I am using has the feeds listed along the left side and the posts on the top right. On the bottom right is where the site for the post will show up. Or, if your like me, you like to see summaries first. You can easily enable it to show summaries in this window instead of individual posts by selecting the glasses in the interface (best if you signup to see what I am talking about).

One feature that I cannot leave out about Blox0r is the bookmark features, which you see above. This is very neat. You have a built in bookmark manager that you can add any website to and even a special folder, “Clippings.” Clippings allow you to bookmark posts from feeds into the folder by simply right clicking on the post name and selecting, “Clip It!” I will be using this a lot! Excellent work to the developer. Look forward to the progress of Blox0r.

Keeping my eye on Side4

I actually just recently came across Side4 one today. It is a very simplistic feed aggregator, and honestly, that’s one of the main reasons I like it. Simple, no clutter, to the point. You are given the choice to choose from two layouts, 3 Column or 1 Column with 2 Rows. In the screenshot, you can see I have chosen to use the 2 row layout because it is what I am more used to. To the left you are given your listing of feeds and suggested feeds, which is nice because it gives some variety. You can also minimize the blocks in the left column. Now, on the right, you have your posts listed on the top and the posts themselves below all loaded up at once so you can easily get to each one and gives faster loading when viewing multiple posts. Nice and simple, easy to read. Side4 is also a great aggregator and can’t wait to see its final release.

So there you have it. Three aggregators for you to choose a picking from. Try em out, see if you like them. As I said above, I don’t think I will be making a switch from Bloglines, but that doesn’t mean I wont still use them for other feeds. You know, I promised myself not to make too long of a post today too, I just cannot win. Oh well, hope you liked the little roundup.