I’m trying to work out a way to hack Bloglines. Bloglines was my first, and up to now, only RSS reader- through Bloglines I discovered mon petit amour RSS, and I’ve been very happy with its basic features. Consequently, I recommended it when I introduced the library to feed-readers, and really should be earning commission now…We also use it as the hub for our very advanced subject alert service…

One day, after sending off over 35 subject alerts I decided to see whether I could start making the process more automatised. If this post had been around, I would have been galvanised… At any rate, Inspiration numero uno was the realisation that I could automatically post from the Bloglines reader to the Bloglines blog, with very little hassle. In the two seconds it took me to try this feature, visions of tagging the posts and then setting up RSS feeds based on tag filters which were sent automatically to patrons filled my head. So I was a little crushed when I realised, very quickly that part 1b of the cunning plan wouldn’t work as Bloglines had no tag feature in the blog. Yes, I did a double take too; I felt betrayed… Could I look Bloglines in the eye again? Needless to say my addiction to RSS is so strong that I jumped straight back into its arms. However, things has changed between us. I secretly started investigating other RSS readers…

This post examines Bloglines vs Google Reader. Most of his arguments didn’t persuade me one way or another- the River of News feed isn’t that relevant for my needs- but then I saw the Share This feature. (Though no mention of tags?) This could be what I was looking for. The things is that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Google. In fact I had managed to stay away from any type of Google account till my favourite mailing list migrated. So now Larry and Sergey have my data. And I’m not too happy about it. I decided that even if Google Reader had great features I would try and look for another solution to my problem.

I started looking up ways to hack Bloglines. Maybe I would be the one to make it change… This post spurred me on. Sadly as I don’t have a TV, the TIVO hack wasn’t much use, nor am I addicted to a Blackberry. However, the hack to use the email to send feeds to blog software was interesting, as was the hack to post direct to del.icio.us.  Hmmm… The brain started whirring.

Ultimately, though I didn’t find a complete solution. Though my enthusiasm has waxed again after reading about ScribeFire; maybe that could hold another piece of the puzzle.

[Update: I'm now using the del.icio.us hack instead of the clippings section of Bloglines for my personal use. (see right hand menu) The words nail and coffin are springing to mind...]

To be continued…