I sit here @ McDonald’s in my ‘a little geeky’ shirt, writing a blog post from my Blackberry running Opera. I think my geek index could only go up if I composed it in Klingon.

Speaking of Opera, I think the browser is very innovative and a good alternative to the built-in browser, despite the three flavors RIM has offered it’s addicts.

However, there are some very frustrating things about Opera on a blackberry that deserve a little attention. And I’m not talking about the kind of attention you might give a stunningly beautiful and heartwarmingly generous woman as she donates her time and money to homeless cleft palate victims in urban areas admidst racial turmoil. I’m talking about the attention you might give an infected dark-green and black scab on the side of that woman’s cheek as she continues to pick at it incessently as she speaks to the children.

Opera is the woman; these annoyances are the scab.

The biggest annoyance is Opera’s inability to be blackberry-like. It ignores most of the time-saving shortcuts we were given in the first place! Things like pressing space for “dot” or “@” in a web or email address. When typing in http://www.whall,org/blog I actually gotta press the periods. Or howdy@domain.com - when blackberry knows it’s an email address, it uses the first space as the “@” sign and all subsequent spaces as dots. A big typing time saver.

The next biggest annoyance is how it accepts the enter key as a character in single-line text fields. For example, if I need to type in ‘whall’ into a username field, I have to select the field by pressing enter, then type in the info into a pop-up window, then click the trackwheel in and select “ok”. The builtin browser is superior to this because as I scroll down the page, the text cursor automatically displays and I can edit in-place, and just scroll down to the next field. The way Opera does it, I inevitably end up having to use both hands for any normal kind of entry.

Another bugaboo is the bugs. The thing crashes once a day. Usually its some java.lang blahblahblah. Please stop crashing!

Yet another is the loss of the ability to paste in a URL. Argh! This was a major downside of the builtin browser already, so I’d switch to Opera as a fix, but noooooo can’t do that any more.

I *do* like many things about opera, but hopefully they start taking advantage of the blackberry advantages in the next version.

Actually, I’m not talking about the following video: 

Although, it is quite a cool video.  And song.  I vote this video for Most Creative Use Of Treadmills In A Music Video.

No, I’m talking about NewsGator Go!, replete with trailing exclamation mark.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with a “feed reader,” here’s the concept:  Reading blogs, although fun and good for your health, can sometimes be a chore, especially if you have to remember to visit each of the sites you like to read, and if you have to calculate how long it’s been since you’ve been there, and if you have to scroll down to find the last entry you read.   Sometimes you waste your time simply by going to a blog and they haven’t written anything since the last time you visited!  The NERVE!  Don’t they know I’m sitting here, waiting to be entertained?!!?!? 

Why can’t someone invent something so I can more easily read all these blogs?  And sheesh, I left a comment yesterday somewhere and I don’t remember where it was or which blog entry, but I sure would like to see a response!

That’s what a feed reader does.  It’s kind of like reading email, but instead of reading up on the latest male enhancement product or must-have narcotic, you can be notified and manage the new posts (and comments) that people write on their blogs.  Most blogs support a little thing called “RSS” which is a fancy way of saying “it works with a feed reader.”  It makes it possible to read and catch up on hundreds of blogs instead of just a few.

I’ve tried a few feed readers along the years, like Bloglines, Google reader, Opera, IE7, and found them all a little helpful but not tremendously helpful.  When I tried FeedDemon a couple years ago, I liked it a LOT and decided to buy it (it’s free now, by the way.  Way to help a brothuh, guys.)

The unique thing about FeedDemon / Newsgator is that although you might read blogs from many different places (browser, desktop, cell phone), it syncs up your feeds and read/unread blogs between all of them.  This is huge!

I can read my feeds from my desktop with the powerful FeedDemon client (Windows only).

I can read my feeds from any web browser with NewsGator Online.

I can read my feeds from my blackberry with NewsGator Go!

It is so incredibly productive and pleasing to me that I can be on my cell phone, catch up on a few blogs, even comment, and then when I get back to my desk, those entries are marked “read” and I don’t have to catch up again.  If I add a new blog to my list while browsing the web, it’s added everywhere.  The converse of this is probably more important - when I remove a blog from a list, it’s removed everywhere.

I can even install a toolbar into my web browser that lets me auto-subscribe to feeds that it auto-finds as I browse the web.