For me, an rss reader became a necessity. Once I got to 100 blogs I was following, the clicking was driving me and my wrist and fingers nuts. I use Bloglines and follow about 275 blogs and other feeds now. Every so often, I'll click a few blog links in my list to see the layout or to leave a comment. But I can't imagine keeping up wtih so many blogs without Bloglines. And I keep finding more blogs I enjoy. :)

Wow, 100 blogs. Definitely, my simplified reader wouldn't work well with so many sources.

Interesting. I was just telling someone today about how I build that tool years ago, one of the first things in Javascript I made. It hasn't been edited since then, but it still works. No other web page has ever remained my home page for as long as "Speed Browse" did.

http://www.faganfinder.com/misc/browse.html

doesn't work in Firefox (I used IE back then). actually, it probably would if I got rid of the browser detection...

You may want to try http://www.diffbot.com . It acts like a feed reader, but it addresses some of those issues you mentioned. For example, it extracts the data directly from the HTML, so that most of the formatting is preserved. Because it comes from HTML, it works even on sites that don't have feeds. However, you still get the functionality of tracking what the new items are.

I wrote some nasty python to create http://trs80.ucc.asn.au/bookmarks.html – it checks (with full 304/etag/last-modified support) if a site has updated and sorts by the time of last update. This is especially useful for me, as I read a lot of webcomics that don't have RSS feeds. It really came into its own once tabbed browsing became available – you just middle click down a column until you reach where you've read before.

I currently have 430 pages or so subscribed, and I find it works fairly well for me. Source is GPL and available on request – trs80ucc.asn.au.

James, what code/ database does that need?

I have a similar tracking script running, but just for a bunch of Google-related sites, emailing me whenever they change.

It uses python, any version 2.1 or later should be ok. The database is a ConfigParser .ini-style plain text file. The core of the script hasn't changed much in a few years, although there are quite a few feature I could add, it quickly reached the "does the job well enough for me" stage.

I second Michael Fagan's Speed Browser. If he ever takes it down I will be lost, I use it every day.

"Wow, 100 blogs. Definitely, my simplified reader wouldn’t work well with so many sources."

i feel like this is the problem. if someone have need to use rss reader he have more than 5-7 feeds. when looking on feed reader projects it seems like designers don't see this. we live in dynamic, full of information world. the tools for interacing with it should be dynamic too. recently there is trend for "feed agregators" but i think that today's version of readers are outdated tools.
waiting for EPIC ;)

Kirby: wow, I didn't know anyone else was actually using it. The only reason I'd ever take it down, is if I finally upgraded it, but I wouldn't change it much even if I did.

"I don’t use RSS readers"
Oh, that's why your feeds are just a bit too short

I use Blogoscoped's feed just to check if the news item is worth reading. Unfortunately texts for most items are just a bit too short to get the post idea :(

Does it mean that Google Blogoscoped is evil and bundles the need to read texts on the the website? :)

I don't like the idea of having different readers for "different" content. There needs to be a GRUR – a Grand Unified Reader that meshes "e-mail", syndication, newsgroups, search, everything. The protocols are different, but I don't need to see that difference.

Artemon;
You say snippets are too short to get the idea, so I just increased their length.
My decision to only offer snippets in RSS isn't related to the fact I don't use an RSS reader, because as I said, I know a lot of people who do use them. And I do get feedback asking for inclusion of full content. My reasons for not doing so are:

- I want to see what traffic I get so I know who I'm doing this for (which is basically what gives me the energy to continue doing it).
- My RSS feed is automatically republished in spam directories and the like, and I don't really want that to happen with my full articles as well.

As a bonus for my advertisers, when people come to this site they get to see the ads, yes. Others (e.g. Boing Boing) offer full RSS feeds, but then put the ads into the feed. Ads cover my server costs and maybe one day make it possible for me to become a full-time blogger. So for now, my decision is to not publish a full-content RSS, and no, it's not an easy decision.

Thanks, Philipp

Feeds became bigger and it is really simpler for me to use them. Certainly I would like to underline that this is my personal opinion

I perfectly understand your point about getting the traffic and readers to your site, not to your feeds. Still readers are not really aginst reading your site. They (and I) just want to read the most interesting stuff. Having an meaningful article snipplet in a feed sounds like an acceptable compromize to me.

P.S.
After all, if reader was tricked to read non-interesting article, he would probably not click context-related AdSense ad ;)