In a case of what Outsell sees as enthusiasm run amok, Bloglines, the RSS reader unit of Ask Jeeves, has announced it will go beyond accommodating RSS feeds for news and updates by enabling users to track shipping information as RSS feeds. Additionally, its press release promises that weather and stock portfolio tracking are on the horizon. The “one portal to rule them all” model is so 1990s, says Outsell’s Chuck Richard. “Users are firmly in control, and most will not want to be walled inside a blog reader application” for all their disparate information needs. In the face of the ability and habit of users to easily go anywhere and everywhere for various information types, this will likely become a hodgepodge solution in search of a problem.
