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Welcome back everybody to Feed Reader Friday here at BBGeeks.com. If you are in the market for a feed reading application for your BlackBerry you have come to the right spot. You will want to check out our previous reviews for an in depth look at each of the RSS readers available to you. Read our reviews, take each for a spin and pick the one you like most.

This week we will be taking a closer look at the Berry Bloglines reader. This RSS reader is built on open source code and requires an active Bloglines account. Once you have signed up for your account (it is free!), simply add any feeds you wish to your Bloglines account and they will be deployed to your BlackBerry on a regular basis.

Registering your Bloglines account

The registration process is quite simple. Just enter in your email address and choose a password. You will also be asked for your time zone and preferred language. Once you have entered in all the appropriate information, an authorization email will be sent to your for confirmation. Click the URL in the delivered email and you are off to the races.

You will be taken to the Bloglines subscription center where you can add new feeds to be viewed on your BlackBerry. Right away you are presented with a list of the most popular subscriptions available (as determined by Bloglines members). Additionally you are given an expanding subject tree which, when drilled down, allows you to select feeds from many different categories.

Categories include: Animal Lover, Artist, Biz Wiz, Blogosphere Buzz + many, many more.

There are multiple feeds available under each of the categories so you will have no trouble finding content that will engage you.

Installing the Berry Bloglines software

Installation of the Bery Bloglines software is easy. The only step required is to point your BlackBerry Browser to the following URL and have it download and install the Berry Bloglines files.

Download Link:http://www.thebogles.com/berrybloglines.jad

Alternately you can download the Application Loader.zip and install the files via PC.

First impressions of the Berry Bloglines RSS reader

Upon first accessing the Berry Bloglines software from your BlackBerry you will be prompted to enter the email address and password you used to sign up during the initial registration.

Visually there is nothing stunning about the Berry Bloglines feed reader. That being said however, the lack of graphics and clutter makes for an easy to navigate experience overall.

Moving around from feed to feed is intuitive, but adding feeds could use a little work. In particular, I was presented with a page when I clicked through on the authorization email. On this page I could select from a vast number of feeds to get me started. I only selected a couple feeds from the list at first, thinking that I could get back to this list later on. The thing is that you cannot access this page from anywhere else. In the short time I was able to use the software, I did not find a link to this page accessible from my BlackBerry. I was, however, able to click through the email again and select more feeds.

There is a great community surrounding the Berry Bloglines reader, with a forum in place where you can participate and ask/answer questions from other subscribers. It also appears that they are attempting to expand their offerings and functionality to allow you access to more than just the RSS feed of any particular website. Available to you are blogs, news, podcasts and more.

This product is in Beta currently so further advancement is inevitable. I expect a truly unique product will be created by the end of the beta phase with the help of members participating in the community.

Features and functionality

All-in-one Blog and news feed search, online subscriptions, news reader, blog publishing and social sharing tools

As stated above, the Berry Bloglines RSS reader will handle just about any content you throw at it. This means a great deal more than just RSS and ATOM feeds. Additionally there are many supported functions to post your news in a published feed, submit and participate in social media networks, and manage all of your online newsletter subscriptions. There is a great deal of information about all of these functions and more being discussed in the Bloglines Forums. Take a look for yourself and I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised at what you find.

Available in 10 languages
You don’t speak English? No problem. Berry Bloglines is available in a variety of languages. The documentation states it is available in 10 languages but I can only see 6 in my preferences drop down box. The languages available for selection are: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Italian.

Mobile version optimized for handheld computers and cell phones
The Berry Bloglines feed reader uses the Google mobile content formatter to optimize any and all requested content. This means you can view full articles rather than snippets and maintain the integrity of all internal links etc.

Email subscriptions help manage your e-newsletter traffic
This is a feature which I have not seen on any other RSS reader reviewed so far. If you are subscribed to any e-newsletters, you can have those emails routed through the Bloglines servers and then distributed to your BlackBerry for reading at your convenience. No more checking multiple email addresses to keep up on your various subscriptions.

Package Tracking (UPS, USPS & FedEx)
This is a great added feature. Simply enter in the tracking number generated by your preferred delivery service and Berry Bloglines will spit out all the necessary details for you to keep tabs on the status of your package.




Custom weather forecasts
Tell Berry Bloglines where you are and it will produce a custom weather forecast for you. You have the ability to set multiple locations to track weather in various cities.

Quick Pick Subscriptions get new users started quickly and easily
This is the page I mentioned earlier that I had trouble getting back to. Be sure to give this page a good looking over and select as many feeds as you think you may be interested in. It is easy to delete feeds from your list so go nuts.

Personalized recommendations to find new subscriptions
The more you use the Berry Bloglines feed reader, the more their servers get used to your preferences. If you are having trouble finding a news feed, or are just looking for something random and new, Berry Bloglines will use the information it has gathered regarding your preferences and suggest some available feeds it thinks you may like.

Bookmarklet for single-click subscriptions to any source
This is quite handy and should be incorporated into some of the other online based feed reading programs. It is a section of code which can be dragged into the bookmarks toolbar on Firefox. After the bookmarklet is in place, you can click on it while visiting any website and that website will be added to your Bloglines feed for future mobile access.


Bloglines Saved Searches deliver future articles matching your key words and phrases
When searching for new feeds to add to your Bloglines account, your search terms are archived. Going forward, Bloglines will use these saved search terms to help determine what new feeds you may be interested in.

Most Popular lists show the days hot topics and which blogs are getting the most noticed
This is a handy feature for those of you who are not quite as addicted to RSS as the rest of us. (Oh don’t worry, you will be shortly)

Every day the Bloglines server will tally up the most popular subscriptions and the hottest topics being discussed. These will then be offered to your for subscription. Assuming that you do not know too many resources for the type of content that interests you and you need to fill up your list; or that you are looking for “something new”, this feature will help you out immensely.

My Conclusions

Overall I have mixed feelings about the Berry Bloglines feed reading software. I think it is absolutely incredible at what it does and it looks like it is expanding into territory that no other reader even dares. That being said, I think that for those of you looking for a straight forward RSS reader will not even use half of the functionality of this software and should therefore be looking at some of the other available RSS options for BlackBerry owners.

For the tech savvy blogger or the “internet crowd”, I think that Berry Bloglines has much to offer. You should definitely give this package a try. Get into it and watch your productivity increase.

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