RSS Bandit is a Fail.

Posted by joshua in Online Services, software  Tags: , , , , ,

28

Jun


Sigh.

Yes, I got excited about RSS Bandit a couple of days ago after it was released in Alpha with NewsGator and Google Reader Syncing capabilities. I have yet been able to get this to actually work and have found the program so buggy as to be unusable. It frequently crashes, spiked the CPU and cause other system instability.

It’s a non-commercial product however so I’m no going to complain too much, just wait for the next version to be released… hopefully a usable beta! A quick Google showed that other users have found it fairly unusable as well.

Download Squad:
“At least that’s the theory. In practice, we’re still waiting for our changes to show up in Google Reader. We read a few items, unsubscribed from a feed, and over an hour later Google Reader is showing no sign that it’s noticed. This is still Alpha software, so it’s possible speedier updates could come at a later date.”

NotGartner:
“Last weekend I was subscribed to over about 1000 RSS feeds and conicidentally last weekend RSSBandit also became unusable. Obviously I had reached some kind of threshold that the architecture of RSSBandit wasn’t designed to cope with.”

Problems with RSS Bandit are much more prevalent on Vista, so I hope with time this will be addressed.

Eric Denekan
“For reading RSS feeds, I use RSS Bandit and until now I was not able to use it, because even though I could install is, I could not configure it correctly or download my feeds from newsgator. The interface froze.”

These where the same issues I experienced but considering it was posted two years ago I would have thought by now it would have been fixed. Considering this post was also written around the same time and the promise has been yet to materialise.

So it looks like I will keep using FeedDemon for some time now. Unfortunately NewsGator are quite insistent that they will not be introducing any Google Reader synchronisation to FeedDemon as they feel NewsGator Online to be the faster and superior product. I think that if this is the case then surely they have nothing to worry about as consumers will be able to see which product is best themselves.

Newsgator Forums:

“We think Google Reader is pretty cool, but we probably won’t sync with it in the near term. NetNewsWire syncs with the NewsGator online reader which has a faster and friendlier new version in beta right now. Going forward, NetNewsWire will be able to sync additional data with NewsGator Online to give features that aren’t available in Google (like seeing the most popular articles recommended for you based on what others are reading).

That being said, feedback from users is important to us. If we continue to hear this request, we’ll move it up the priority list for consideration.”

Sure sure.

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10 Users Commented In This Post

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Dare Obasanjo says, June 28th, 2008   

Hello Joshua,
I’m Dare, the lead developer of RSS Bandit. The release we put out last week was an ALPHA and I tried to make sure our announcement post indicated that it was highly unstable & buggy. Unfortunately, the Google Reader synchronization functionality seems to have attracted a lot of new users who expected to see a finished product.

The purpose of the release was to get bug reports about what instability had been introduced by the new features. So thanks for your feed back even though it isn’t particularly specific or actionable.

PS: A lot of the blogs you excerpted where taken out of context. The Vista complaints were from people running a BETA version of Vista before it was even released. We fixed our Vista issues in the release after Vista was final. The complaint on Download Squad is from someone using the current ALPHA which as I mentioned was known to have issues. The memory usage complaint was from three years ago.

Either way, thanks for taking the time to try out the application and for giving us your opinions.

Michael Foord says, June 28th, 2008   

BLOG FAIL

darkkosmos says, June 28th, 2008   

“The release we put out last week was an ALPHA and I tried to make sure our announcement post indicated that it was highly unstable & buggy.”

Teaches you guys not to use an alpha product :/

joshua says, June 28th, 2008   

I may have written a little harshly and rudely :) Sorry guys.

I did say this though:

“It’s a non-commercial product however so I’m no going to complain too much, just wait for the next version to be released… hopefully a usable beta!”

Matteo says, June 28th, 2008   

Hello

You cannot expect too much from an early alpha software, you have to wait at least a public beta and then take your opinions. Alpha SW is just an idea, Beta SW is software “work in progress” and then the final release is what you have to use.. RSS Bandit works, some things works but is still an alpha …

Martin says, June 28th, 2008   

Guys Web 2.0 has somewhat changed our perception of alpha, beta and release candidates. A review should be ok as long as you point out that it is an alpha version that you are reviewing.

OJ says, June 28th, 2008   

+1 BLOG FAIL.

Why not inform the author of the bugs you’ve found rather than wasting time ranting about alpha software?

Doug says, June 28th, 2008   

A review of an alpha should surely focus on the features, not the stability. If a feature crashes, then it doesn’t work - yet. Calling it a fail os far more than harsh, and quoting out-of-context ‘corroboration’ is just lazy.

Wow, I’m an RSS Bandit fanboy :)

joshua says, June 29th, 2008   

I agree… it was uncalled for and I have sent an apology to the developer of RSS Bandit.

:)

Patricia says, July 1st, 2008   

Joshua, I read your blog with great excitement and interest, I am always eager to try the products that you recommend. I clicked on the comment button via my feedreader to tell you that I have only had positive experiences with software that you have recommended and to ask that you please maintain your good reputation by checking out the software first before posting. However, this all makes sense, it was an Alpha release, and you tried to warn us, but users of your blog are used to releases ready for public consumption. No harm done, lessons learned. I will continue to watch your blog, knowing that you will not laud a release not ready for public consumption yet, and I will watch RSS Bandit for what it will become. It looks promising. I admire the way that you have handled this and admire the makers of RSS Bandit for posting here. Take care.

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