I have to admit I'm not sure how I'll react to the next version of RSS Bandit but I'm honestly curious to find out.  Not a sentiment you hear much so let me explain...

I used RSS Bandit for a long time and was happy with it but eventually Google Reader became good enough and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to access my feeds from anywhere.  So I switched.  Then recently RSS Bandit creator Dare Obasanjo announced he'd be integrating the ability to sync with Google Reader into the next version of RSS Bandit. 

You might be thinking this is a no brain-er at this point and maybe it is.  But there's some hesitation on my part.

The thing is, for me (and I think a lot of other people), feed reading is the first task where I've successfully moved completely to a web based solution.  Sure I use Gmail but for my important e-mail I still use Outlook.  Same with Calendars, Word Processing and everything else.  But Google Reader has become my one and only reader and I'm relatively happy. 

So the questions is: Once you get accustomed to a web interface is there any need for the extra bells and whistles?  I know RSS Bandit has more features but at the same time I've never felt like I was missing out on things because I use Google Reader.  So, as of right now, there really isn't a big draw for me to go back to it.

Which brings us to the macro question of it all: If I, with my love of computer features, don't switch back what does that say for  your average computer user once they make the move to web based? 

I honestly don't know the answers to that question but I think it reflects on the debate between desktop apps and web based ones.  If a good Desktop app can't lure users back to that approach than that is the beginning of the end for them in general.  The web offers a lot of compelling things that desktop apps can't offer so if the desktop can't utterly dominate in its area of strength than what hope does it have for the future?

Now the truth is that this debate will probably become less and less relevant as Flash matures and technologies like Silverlight arise to bridge the gap between the Desktop and the Web.  But right now I think there are a lot of little programmers with niche products trying to decide between continuing on with their existing Desktop approach or moving to a web based development model. 

For those folks I think the question of switching boils down to "will my users miss the desktop model and go with one of my competitors?"  For them I think the question above is a very important one.

I subscribe to this blog in Google Reader just to make sure that everything gets out-putted correctly and recently I've been noticing an odd bug.

For some reason posts from a week ago randomly reappear as new even at times when I haven't posted to the blog.  These changes aren't coming from the feed itself in that Google Reader marks the time posted as today while the feed clearly shows the correct times on the posts themselves.

This parallels a problem I read about on Scoble's blog yesterday (though to a much lesser extent) in which his feed was showing up incorrectly in Bloglines.  In response to Scoble's complaint Paul Querna replied that the reason was as follows...

At the bottom of every post on a wordpress.com blog, is a tracker image used for statistics. It includes a rand parameter, which changes every time the feed is fetched over HTTP. The image URL is something like this:

http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=scobleizer.com&rand=2045631674&blog=3428&post=3957&subd=scobleizer&ref=&feed=1

Because this rand value changes every time we read the feed, we considered the Item ‘Updated‘.

to which Scoble replied...

Here’s Bloglines reply about the issue with my feed and turns out the problem was actually a bug in Wordpress.com, which Matt Mullenweg admitted to and is taking care of. Nice to see this taken care of, thanks. I mean that sincerely. Sorry I had to make a stink, but I was getting tons of complaints and needed to force the issue cause no one was taking care of this bug.

I have to disagree here.  Bloglines is choosing to use a non-standard way to judge which entries are updated even when a standard way exists (the last updated timestamp) and in doing so they are causing a problem for their users.  That IS Bloglines' fault.  The fact that Matt Mullenweg was nice enough to work around their feed reader's bad behavior does not change that fact.

Back to my problem I really don't know what the issue is with Google Reader but I'm almost sure it stems from the same type of issues as above which is to say a feed reader that is choosing to implement its own standards rather than follow the ones that already exist.  I would hope that anyone who makes a feed reader would consider stopping this type of behavior in that it makes troubleshooting impossible for individual feed publishers (because you can't know the unofficial standards they are using) while simultaneously annoying their users (with multiple posts).

One of the more interesting conversations I had while in Sacramento was about information delivery.  For those who don't know me personally I'm what can charitably be called a "Consistently Distracted Guest" in that I'm constantly checking my Cell. Phones as different buzzes inform me there is new information to be had. 

I work really hard to be polite about it but the bottom line is that I like to be connected at all times.

One of the things you forget about family is that, though you've known them longer than anyone chronologically, in many ways they don't know you at all.  You may e-mail, you may talk on the phone but unless you are within a few miles of each other you probably spend no more than a handful of hours per year together.  So sometimes they'll notice certain behaviors in you that everyone else in your life has just come to the point of taking for granted (and because they're your family they'll be open enough to say it) 

My obsessive checking of Cell. Phones was one of those occasions.  Where this becomes interesting is when I began to explain to them just what I was doing looking at my cell phone every 15 minutes and what being able to do that meant for me.  The real eye-opener came when showing them how to use Google Reader and getting the reaction "Why would you want to do something like that?" 

I'll be the first to admit the reaction took me by surprise.  I had always known that most people didn't live their life like I did but I always assumed it was because they lacked either the patience or the ability to leverage the tools in a way that would deliver what they wanted to them.  Only after probing a little did I discovered just how uncomfortable people of a certain age are around the rapid delivery of information. 

Quick Caveat: I'm going to break things down be age below but I realize that in many ways those are artificial generalizations.  There are certainly those over 30 who have embraced technology and those under 30 who have not.  But in the context of the current discussion I'm referring to what I believe to be the majority of people in each age group.

The similie I came up with to describe what I found was this: Imagine a person's youth as them growing up in a locked room.  The difference between people older than 30 and people younger than 30 is that for the older people the room was empty and for the younger people the room was full of people.  Now that both are adults and both are interacting on the essentially equal footing the younger ones feel uncomfortable without the noise of the other people in the room while the older people feel uncomfortable without the silence. 

If you think about it the above holds fairly true to life.  Younger people have grown up with E-Mail, Cell Phones, Pagers, IM, and so on which all act as a thousand little voices coming at them at all times.  So they've become accustomed to that type of environment.  Older people on the other hand could walk away from their land line and essentially be cut off from the world which is the environment they'd grown accustomed to.  Two very different experiences that create two very different comfort zones.

I really think this has a big impact because it raises the question of how we tailor solutions that both serve the needs of the (for lack of a better term) "Web 2.0 Demo" while still drawing in the older crowd?  How do we reach each demographic without alienating the other in the process? 

They're questions I've just begun to ponder and I suspect I'll be talking about them more as time goes on but I wanted to share the experience for now.  If Web 2.0 is about scale and harnessing the wisdom of the crowds than it will only achieve its full potential by drawing everyone into that crowd, even people who are uncomfortable with technology in the first place.

I'm going to cheat a little bit here. 

I had already written a pretty anemic post explaining why I like Mathew Ingram but I was never happy with it because of how short it was.  Then Mr. Ingram made a point I really wanted to draw attention to and that made the situation worse because it would be odd to make the blogroll post and then turn around and quote him in a separate post.

So I'm combining the two ideas into one post with the first part being why I appreciate his blog and the second part addressing what I wanted to say about his recent post.

On the first point, I think the easiest way to make it is to say that there have been many occasions where I honestly felt Mathew Ingram was the only sane  person in the blogosphere.  Whenever there's one of those "techmeme explosion" where everyone's jumping up and down over some imagined slight Mr. Ingram is almost always the first one to (a) realize how unreasonable everyone is being and (b) call them on it.  Neither of which are small tasks as you end up drawing the enmity of everyone and often times end up alone because those who agree with you don't have the guts to draw that same enmity.

I'm really not sure the tech blogosphere could go on without a Mathew Ingram in it and I would hate to see it try.  For that reason I've put him at #4 on my blogroll. 

That is also what makes it hard to write a whole post about him.  I don't think you could overestimate his value but stating that fact doesn't take terribly long.  Which is why my initial post on him was so anemic and why I'm now resorting to this (somewhat awkward) transition.

Recently he made a post in regards to the whole "Google Shared Items" snafu in which he lays out how odd it is to get angry at Google for sharing items that you marked as "Shared" (a point that a surprising amount of people are missing). 

That's a good point in itself but in his post I think he makes a bigger point that gets lost in the shuffle.  That is what I wanted to draw attention to.  In the post he says...

Scoble has decided to take the high road and blame Google for not implementing ‘granular privacy controls’ — and that might be a good thing for Reader, just as it would be for Facebook.

But it’s not something that’s necessary, in my opinion, nor is it something Google should be slammed for not having. The company explained that shared items would be visible to GTalk contacts — pretty simple, in my opinion. Plus, they can only be seen by contacts who also use Google Reader, and those contacts have to specifically click on the shared items from other users to see them. It’s not as if they’re being emailed to your friends, or scrolling by on the Jumbotron.

Would GPC be handy to have? Sure.

This brings up something I noticed earlier this year with Amazon's Kindle when several people commented that the Kindle was insufficient because it lacked the iPhone's touch interface.  Bloggers understandably want their dream product but it is not understandable to then bash a product if it doesn't do everything exactly the way you want it to. 

Sure there are some features that really do become "must have" but those are a rare occasion.  Even features as great as a touch interface or Granular Privacy Control aren't enough to make the whole product insufficient and I'd bet money that virtually no one dropped Google Reader because of the sharing feature.

If you want to fairly review any product you really have to force yourself to be sensible and weigh all the good features against the bad.  What makes the above cited criticism particularly maddening is the fact that none of each products competitors sport the features being demanded.  So how is it fair to then demand that feature from one vendor?

I'm not saying you can't suggest things for future releases I'm just saying there's a huge difference between "I wish it had this" and "it sucks because it doesn't have this".  That's a difference that more bloggers should pay attention to.