Attensa Meets Performancing: Something Has To Go

I got a demo of the brand spanking new Attensa RSS products — one integrated into Outlook (which I don’t have, being a Machead), and an online version — and immediately after trying some of the apparently cool features, ran into some stumbling blocks.

Here’s a screenshot of the Outlook version (click for fullsize):

Here’s a screenshot of the Online version (click for fullsize):

The problems I had?

1. First, the Firefox plugin that would allow me to automagically discover RSS feeds on pages I am viewing doesn’t come with the free Online version. Apparently you have to have/buy the Outlook version. So I guess you have to manually find and insert the RSS feeds. I have learned that Attensa plans to unbundle this, but at the moment, you’re stuck.
   
   
2. So, I did add some feeds manually, including importing an OPML file. Seems to work, but creating folders (“categories”) is very counter-intuitive. Apparently the only way to do this is to move feeds to a new “category”?
   
   
3. And then, the headaches started. I was using the neato web view, which displays the post being looked at in the native HTML, not the RSS stream. I saw a piece I wanted to post about, selected some text, and cnrl-clicked on it — this brings up the Performancing blog editor (which despite its bugs and flaws, I still use all the time). However, the link pasted into the new post in Performancing was to the Attensa Online Reader, not the post being displayed in Web view.

Here’s that screenshot (click for fullsize):

I am a bad test subject, though, since I really don’t want a reader, anyway. That’s a rude approximation of what I really do, which is wandering around, as a forager. But if new tools don’t play nice with the ones I am already comfortable with, they never find a place in my world. I will suspend judgment on Attensa’a attempts, here, until I can see what the toolbar for Firefox holds.