Outlook + Attensa v GMail + Google Reader

by admin on May 12, 2007

in Innovation

Having Windows running under Parallels provides opportunities for comparison between desktop applications and browser based apps running in Firefox on the Mac. The last couple of days I’ve played with Outlook 2007 working with Attensa’s RSS reader, comparing it with Google Mail tied to the Google Reader.

The verdict: Outlook + Attensa wins but only just. Here’s why:

Outlook + Attensa
Attensa2
Outlook integration by Attensa is great but a tad flawed. The screen is way too cluttered for my taste. That could well be because Outlook provides much more than email management.

Attensa’s ‘River of News’ view is slick and quick but I could not see when new items have arrived when the folders are collapsed

LiveWriter integration is a big bonus but then I don’t swipe entire posts for publishing purposes so it is of limited value to me as a user.

Desktop alerts for new items is a useful addition but I turned it off because it became annoying

Del.icio.us integration doesn’t seem to work – or at least it’s not retrieving the tags I have in my del.icio.us account.

GMail + Google Reader

Greader
Since GMail is a browser only application, I needed to find and load add-ons to Firefox in order to achieve a similar experience. That’s not difficult but it pays to make the right choices.

I use the Better GMail add-on for Firefox. It provides a simple interface that tells me when new items have arrived and can be set to only show new items. I prefer that because with 200+ feeds, I don’t want to see feed names where there is no update.

I can share items very quickly from within Google Reader but there’s no direct del.icio.us tag mechanism. I can overcome that with the Firefox del.icio.us buttons add-on.

There is a LiveWriter for Firefox add-on but it only works with Windows.

Both suffer from not allowing me to see both news and mail in the same view – it’s one or the other. I don’t know whether that’s an issue for others but it is for me. There is a GMail add-on for Firefox that allows a split view but I couldn’t make it work on the latest version of FF.

If you’ve standardised on Windows then Attensa is a good choice with plenty of configuration options. If, like me, you prefer to live in the Internet cloud and want a simpler life, then it’s GMail + Better GMail. Enterprisey types will almost certainly prefer the Attensa option because of the control it affords. Others may have different preferences.

Which will I end up using as my preferred combo? Probably GMail/Google Reader.

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Al

1. Because I can

Fair enough, it was good enough for Sir Edmond Hilary;)

2. Create link blog as an alternative to del.icio.us

You can do this with just reader, not sure why you want to republish your email though.

3. Speed of operation

I can understand this, but for me prioritisation helps me with speed.

4. Fast access to blog out if needs be without switching between applications

Ok I'm obviously missing something here, This is a feature I am unaware of, how does it do this.

Overall I still can't see why combining email and feeds is beneficial apart from Edmond's justification.

regards
Al

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alastair

I like Als comment about "polluted" email. Not least because I have to grapple with a bloated inbox and a restrictive corporate email inbox size policy. Not to mention the annoying way that outlook deals with threads. Not to mention the nonsense that gets written in emails (I include me in this!).

perhaps a kind sole would point me towards email annonymous?

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Colin

If you use any of the GMAIL/Reader greasemonkey scripts (eg: http://www.winstonyw.com/2006/11/03/greasemonkey-s...) you can get both news and email in a very convenient interface. It works great!

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Dennis Howlett

1. Because I can
2. Create link blog as an alternative to del.icio.us
3. Speed of operation
4. Fast access to blog out if needs be without switching between applications

I still have NNW running in background in case I want to revisit feeds for further news stuff or specific posting though I could avoid that purely by 'starring' posts

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Al

This is interesting for me Dennis because I don't quite understand why you would want to combine the 2 things into a single interface.

In my case I would hate my feeds being polluted with my email. I am a strong believer in communication channels, my email and feeds are completely different channels. Email tends to get 'polluted' and as such that is why I classify it as a low priority/attention channel. My feeds however are channels I have purposely 'tuned into' and thus I give them higher attention/priority. In fact I have more than one Feed channel, I actually have several that have their own priorities. If I was to aggregate all of these channels into one, I would be far less effective in communication/attention.

Given the above, I am curious as to what the benefits of aggregating in this way are?

regards
Al

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