You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.
I've mentioned in the past that I think by default when you read something in your RSS reader it should mark it as read. You shouldn't have to click a stupid little button that does it for you. This is a huge reason why I've stuck with Bloglines all this time. With the number of feeds I read, sometimes the nicest thing is the ability to just click a feed and have all the entries just disappear. Viola, clean slate.
Well, after writing that last entry, I contact Rojo and asked them about the feature, mentioning that it was a huge barrier for me. I got a very nice response telling me that they've heard that feedback before and that it should be coming relatively soon. Since then, I've been thinking about it more and more as Bloglines has been especially terrible lately. It seems that any time I stay on for an extended period eventually I'll start clicking on feeds that say there are new entries and the entries will disappear when I click them, never to return. I think it probably has to do with the ability to navigate with the keyboard, which Bloglines added, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, I was incredibly pleasantly surprised to find this email today:
Hi Noah,
I just wanted to follow up that we've completed your request. Mark as Read can happen on an intermediate feed level without a click. You need to go to My Account Settings, under Display, and check the box next to "Automatically mark feeds read.". Now the 'How frequently Read', 'Unread Story Count', and 'Name' views will automatically mark feeds read as you move down your list.
Thank you very much for giving this new feature your support. As you know, we appreciate our user's feedback so if you have any more great suggestions, please don't hesitate to send them in to Feedback or post them on the user forums!
Sincerely,
Barbara Stephenson
Customer Support
Rojo Networks, Inc.
So not only did they add the feature I requested, but they were nice enough to write me an email and let me know about it. Wow. So the first thing I did was head on over to Rojo and sure enough, it works just as advertised. That means, I'm moving everything over and giving it Rojo a shot, if it's as good as everyone says it is, I'm sure I'll love it. I've got to admit, they're already looking pretty good in my book.
A special thanks to Barbara Stephenson who took the time to write the email and allowed me to post it here, I appreciate it very much.