My New New Favorite Web Thingy is Janes' Blogosphere Blogtrack which is a web-based blog aggregator. I like it better than AmphetaDesk+AmphetaOutlines. It is generally faster, is outline based, and is web-based instead of running as a server on my machine. It also has one feature that I think is crucial: CheckPoint. If AmphetaOutlines would add some way to 'mark all read', it would have the same effect. The downside to Blogtrack is that it is web-based. Being web-based cuts two ways. It frees you from needed new software on your local machine and gives you a consistent aggregation no matter what machine you are on, but you are dependent on the (free!) service which means if it goes away you lose your list of blogs and current state (not a big loss I admit, but still a loss). If Blogsphere turned into a business, I would happily page $30 a year to use the service (the cost of one magazine subscription).

And the really downside to both of them is that neither handles all of the web sites that I read. Both can handle RSS feeds. In addition, Janes' can also handle sites that it can parse independent of an RSS file. However, not all of the blogs out there do one or the other (some do niether, mine for instance - although I plan to change that soon). Until all the blogs do something that allows one aggregator to suffice, i will be using them both along with manual scanning to read everything.