RSS Reader Decisions

Maybe some of you alread noticed that "Sub with bloglines" icon at the bottom right I added when I opened this blog. So most can guess, that I use bloglines as online rss reader. - Right, I do so. But sometimes I am not sure, if bloglines is the best choice. I tried to use some extra tools for OS X and checked out some other sites, that offer services like bloglines.

All rss readers for the OS of my esteem were not that satisfactiory. That's why I won't mention any of those here in detail. And one of the biggest disadvantages has been that I have to carry my iBook with me where the reader is installed to read my feeds when I'm not at home.
That's why I switched back to the online reader.

In February I searched out the Chameleon reader. Chameleon uses the bloglines service, but adds some features to keep track of all your feeds. Therefor Chameleon figures out which feeds are your favorites, using a few novel algorithms, and highlights them. It also identifies the top links in your feeds and shows you your usage scores based on the algorithms.
Those are neat features, but do I need stuff like that. I have to decide, if I may open that feed at first after logging in to the reader, because otherwise it will get above threshold. And it will take me a few days to get it out of my favorite feed list.
And when I would like to add a new feed to the reader, I have to go to bloglines again, to add the feed to my account. So why don't use bloglines anyway?

Last week I recovered feedtagger, which, like the name suggests, uses tags with your feeds. It is easy to start with feedtagger. Just export an OPML file from your subscribed feeds at bloglines and import it to feedtagger. Afterwards you add tags to every single feed. And that's where work begins. You have to think of significant tags for your subscriptions. But can you tell what every feed is all about? Maybe about Apple, but sometimes it's about music, too. Not very often, but it happens, they write about private stuff that does not belong to Apple or music. So, which tags to choose?

You have the same problem with del.icio.us, too, but I started with del.icio.us from scratch and did not import all my old bookmarks to it. My list of tags grew slowly and while you tag links in del.icio.us, most of them are about one special issue. That's why tagging at del.icio.us is much easier than tagging your feeds at feedtagger.
But the idea of feedtagger is nice. If it was easier to choose significant tags that hit all subject of a feed, you were able to read just feeds about "mac", "movies" or "music". (My interests seem mainly start with a m...)

While Chris of feedtagger fixes german umlauts for me, I will stick with feedtagger and try to make a few more suggestions to get my favorite rss reader. Meanwhile I have to think again about my tags.