I've been using NewsMonster for a couple of weeks. Since I have been a Radio Userland user for at least a year now for reading news feeds, I had to change some of my habits to get used to NewsMonster. Change is good.

• I really like having the feeds display its own sidebar - if I am rushed for time, I can easily select the feeds I *need* to read. FM RadioStation  has a similar feature; however, they do it MS Outlook-style, offering a 3-pane view of news feeds, which is pretty darn nice.
• The java-based aggregator is buggy - sometimes it chokes while it is processing the subscriptions.rdf file, which is the xml list of feeds to which the user is subscribed. This morning it had a problem processing the sitefilters listed in subscriptions.rdf - no big deal (I don't really need them) - I used a text editor and took them out. There probably needs to be a little more validation when news feeds are added to the subscription list.
• I have to explicitly start the aggregator when I want it to collect the feeds or update the current list. This process should be automatic, upon browser start-up (perhaps configurable in prefs) and per the specs in each site's RSS file.
• There needs to be a way to post to your blog from NewsMonster.

I drinking the koolaid - I support what Kevin Burton, developer of Newsmonster is doing - and I've hit the Paypal button on his website to encourage development of NewsMonster. His moves echo some of the things that Dave Winer, progenitor of Radio Userland, did to capture my attention (and to earn some of my money):

• Discusses issues that I find interesting in his blog
• Passionate about his work
• Supports many of the ideas behind the open source movement, while still acknowledging the need to make a living.

1:37:38 PM    

If I were still using Internet Explorer for browsing, I would really like this alot. (I'm using Mozilla.) Still, FM RadioStation is a pretty impressive front-end for Radio Userland, which is a blogging newsreader. I am especially impressed that they offer tabs for the Browsing component. And there's a spellchecker for the blogging app! A couple of kinks:

• Tabs should load in the background.
• Not all of my categories (17) show in the Publish section

I'm committed to using Mozilla as my main web platform; therefore, I'm using the standard browser-based Radio Userland for blogging and NewsMonster for reading RSS feeds.

1:04:41 PM