Google Reader may have stolen some of its thunder, but Bloglines, one of the original online RSS readers, remains a very popular option. In fact, the beta version of Bloglines has just rolled out three new features that might leave you feeling a bit unsatisfied with Google Reader's more limited feature set.
The first and handiest of the new Bloglines features is a “save” option, which essentially adds the features of a bookmarking service inside the Bloglines reader. Bloglines already had an option to “pin” a bookmark, which works very much like the “starred” items option in Google Reader, offering a way to mark feed items you eventually want to look at more closely.
The difference between the new save option and old pinning feature is really a matter of separating out different elements of your workflow. The pin option is intended to quickly mark things you want to revisit while the saved items are things you want to store forever.
It's a fairly subtle difference, but it demonstrates the Bloglines is in tune with the different ways people are using the service — perhaps more so than Google Reader, which lacks any sort of save feature. Also note that even if you aren't using the beta, the old “clippings” feature in the “classic” version of Bloglines has been migrated to the new saved items label. You can access your saved items via a new “saved” folder in the My Library section.
The second new feature in the revamped beta is an option to create a third pane in the Bloglines window which will load the actual site in question. With the advent of RSS many people simply stopped visiting sites directly, but not all sites offer full text RSS feeds, which means that, to get the rest of the content, you need to open the site in a new window. The Bloglines new “Blog View” eliminates that by loading the page itself within your reader window.
The final feature is a nice little Flickr widget that adds a larger thumbnails for images in your Flickr feeds. Previously, only the text description was available.
Our favorite features from Bloglines remain the OpenID and iPhone support, but the new features keep coming and Bloglines might be worth another look if you haven't used the beta version before.
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