Tuesday, July 29, 2003

FeedDemon is not Tivo, yet. Part One.


Don't take this harshly. I love FeedDemon, but I love my Tivo more.

I love RSS readers because they help me manage the information glut. Much easier to have all the news in one spot rather than surf, surf, surf. But FeedDemon is not as good as my Tivo, yet.

Tivo manages channels and lots of information. I can watch programs when I want. It records shows I like or thinks I'll like. But what it does better than FeedDemon is helping me manage my channels. I just wish that FeedDemon was a little smarter.

Here's one example. I just clicked on a XML button to subscribe to a feed while browsing with FeedDemon. [BTW, this is one of the neat things about FeedDemon and very much like Tivo's thumb's up icon that rarely appears during cross-promotions.] But after a few steps FeedDemon gives me an error message: "A channel with this name already exists." And asks if I want to add the existing channel to this listing? It is at this point that FeedDemon frustrates me. Maybe I want to move the channel to this listing and delete it from the other listing. What other listing or listings have the channel. Does this effect performance or being a good RSS citizen. Will this just be an alias to the existing entry? What if I really want it in a new listing?

I have some other non-Tivo behavior, but let's start with this one.

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