AOL's AJAX RSS reader

AOL now has their AJAX-based RSS feed reader available for try-out. I am not so sure how viable it is, since it wouldn't let me click "add" after I had selected my feeds for reading (during the initial sign-in). Seemed to be a problem with Firefox 2, but IE6 worked just fine. I don't see much advantage yet over many of the feed readers out there, Google Reader, Bloglines, GreatNews, NewsGator, and the like. This reader is so far very minimalist, which I suppose could turn into a good product, except I would expect to see a lot more "deal-breaker" features included on the first test run (which this is). The feed reader demo requires an AOL screenname (what doesn't at AOL these days?). Another thing I am not so fond of is the huge feed titles, that apparently you can't change. The titles are blue and way too big, taking up valuable screen real estate, especially on a laptop display. The verdict here? Not quite ready for prime time, it is a nice idea, but I wouldn't use it for every day feed reading just yet.

Disclosure: AOL is the parent company of the Weblogs, Inc. network and this blog.

Tags: ajax, aol, feeds, freeware, javascript, news, reader, rss