News Rivers and Bloglines Mobile

Like Dave Winer I recently broke down and purchased a Blackberry to replace my aging cell phone. I've been taking Winer's News River feeds for a spin and find them user friendly and valuable to check in on the BBC and NYT news. However, in all the buzz about the River feeds I've seen little discussion on Bloglines Mobile and how it differs in application. I use Bloglines as my RSS reader of choice and I added the mobile version to my Blackberry. I've been very happy having the mobile version available to check feeds. There are a couple of annoying features that I have come across -- but otherwise it looks and operates great. I think both are valuable tools for mobile news consumption -- and they are suited for different purposes. Doc Searls hits on some good points about getting the publishing world to focus more on the needs of mobile cell phone news junkies.

My Bloglines Mobile contains the specific information that I want pushed to me to monitor, review and read. For example, I've set up news feeds to monitor particular news topics on clients that I do work for. I can use it to quickly monitor without wading through all the other news. Plus, the news isn't just from the NYT or BBC. On the otherhand, there are times that I just want to scan the news -- like looking through the local paper every morning. I not particulary interested in any specific item.

My analogy building off a quote of Dave Winer in a post by Kevin O'Keefe. Somedays I like to stand around on the bank all day long and watch all the boats go up and down the River -- but other times I only want to be alerted to specific ones (like the Delta Queen). I want to know when she is coming along so I can run down to the bank, watch her and hear her calliope.

UPDATE: A new feature added to Bloglines Mobile to make reading your favorite feeds easier. Bloglines has integrated Skweezer technology that optimizes web pages for use on mobile devices. I haven't had much of chance to try it out but I look forward to using the feature.

Tags: RSS, Blackberry, mobile, river, Bloglines, river of news, skweezer