Yahoo's gone and ruined blo.gs

December 5, 2005 11:25 AM

I'm fed up with blo.gs. Anyone know of a replacement?

Since Yahoo! took over the blo.gs blog tracking service, it's gone to shit. Features have been stripped out, bugs introduced, and, most recently, the site has been unaccessible for over a day at least.

Basically, I'm looking for a service that will manage a list of the blogs I read, and tell me when they've updated. I don't like RSS readers, so I'm not looking for anything like that. Just a list of my favorites, organized by how recently they were updated. Bonus points if it has extras, like being able to pull that list out via RSS or OPML.

I've thought of just building one myself, but I don't quite have the chops to take that project on. If you know of anything open source that I could build on, that might work too.

posted by paulrockNJ to computers & internet (13 comments total)

the source for blo.gs is available.
posted by jimw at 11:40 AM on December 5, 2005

netvibes.com
posted by pwally at 12:12 PM on December 5, 2005

From: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/feedmesh/message/522

Blo.gs first went down last night, was up briefly this morning, and has been back down today. It should be operational again shortly.

Basically the issue is that blo.gs hasn't been switched over to our (Yahoo!'s) infrastructure yet and given the ever increasing number of feeds, the database has just started crapping out. When we bring it back up tonight there will be more redundancy and we'll continue to improve the situation in the coming weeks.

posted by camworld at 12:18 PM on December 5, 2005

I don't like RSS readers, so I'm not looking for anything like that.

And yet what you're asking for is exactly what RSS readers do. What exactly don't you like about RSS readers? Presumably it's not the notification of updated websites.
posted by scottreynen at 12:44 PM on December 5, 2005

what differentiates blo.gs from an rss reader is that it simply lets you know what blogs have been updated, it doesn't feed you the content of those updates.

blo.gs is also able to serve up that list as a mozilla/firefox/whatever sidebar, and in various xml formats you can use to incorporate into your own site (like simon willison's "blogs i read", for example).

from a quick glance, netvibes.com is not at all like what blo.gs offers. it appears to just be another my-yahoo-style rss reader.
posted by jimw at 12:57 PM on December 5, 2005

fyi, jimw is the original developer for blo.gs.
posted by gleuschk at 1:01 PM on December 5, 2005

jimw nailed it. i prefer to read these sites in my browser, not via a feed.

Jim, I guess you would be the expert in this field. If you don't know of any comparable services, it's safe to assume none exist.

I'll just have to wait for Yahoo to get their act together, and follow Jim's blog in the process, as he does a better job of keeping users updated than Yahoo does.
posted by paulrockNJ at 2:08 PM on December 5, 2005

well, you could probably use blogrolling.com to do the same sort of thing, but it is more geared towards managing a list of blogs that you include on your own site via a javascript include. it does support opml and rss.

but historically, it has had its own stability issues.
posted by jimw at 4:13 PM on December 5, 2005

When we bring it back up tonight there will be more redundancy and we'll continue to improve the situation in the coming weeks.

That was Friday. This is Monday. Still nothing. Sigh.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 7:35 PM on December 5, 2005

Bloglines has an option to just show you the headlines of blog entries on updated blogs... I know you hate RSS readers but it seems like you could at least use Bloglines just to tell you that your fave blog has been updated, and then go from the bloglines links to the site to read your blogs.

Just out of curiosity, why do you prefer reading the blog entries on the site as opposed to in an RSS reader? Isn't it the same?
posted by antifuse at 2:27 AM on December 6, 2005

Umm, because the design disappears?
I guess it depends on what you read but I'd hate it if every weblog entry I read looks the same. Plus there's such a thing as photologs and artlogs that depend very much on the presentation.
posted by milov at 6:02 AM on December 6, 2005

Zeldman said it better than I could've.

[Full content syndication] makes sense on sites where page layout is primarily a delivery system for writing, as cigarettes are a delivery system for nicotine.

But most smokers would rather puff than inject nicotine, and most of us used to be as hungry to see a site as to read its words.

And two days later:

Our hand-coded, fledgling RSS feed does not pretend to deliver this site as a text channel. It is simply a notification system listing freshly posted topics along with their permalinks. It most closely resembles an opt-in email. This, it seems to us, is an excellent use of RSS.

This is what blo.gs did for me, and this is exactly what I wanted. I use a browser for the web, not an aggregator.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 10:13 AM on December 6, 2005

Well, they're up and running again.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 8:56 PM on December 9, 2005