Comments on: RSS Bandit is a Fail.

By: Patricia

Patricia — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:53:54 +0000

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.

By: joshua

joshua — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:47:15 +0000

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

By: Doug

Doug — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:49:59 +0000

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 :)

By: OJ

OJ — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:37:16 +0000

+1 BLOG FAIL.

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

By: Martin

Martin — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:53:49 +0000

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.

By: Matteo

Matteo — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:36:49 +0000

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 …

By: joshua

joshua — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:15:43 +0000

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!”

By: darkkosmos

darkkosmos — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:48:21 +0000

“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 :/

By: Michael Foord

Michael Foord — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:35:42 +0000

BLOG FAIL

By: Dare Obasanjo

Dare Obasanjo — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:40:41 +0000

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.