I was browsing the iPhone’s app store the other day and on a whim decided to do a search for “lotro” to see what popped up. Amongst the listed applications was one that appeared to be new to me (but I could have just overlooked it). It’s name? “LOTRO News” by LOL Software. It’s claim? To provide all the LOTRO news you could need. The reality, it’s a (crappy) RSS reader preloaded with very few RSS feeds to various sites. So what’s bad about this?
Well, first off Google Reader will do this for you for free, where as LOL Software’s will cost you $.99. Secondly Google reader will also update automatically, where as LOL Software’s seems to update sporadically (it first would only load posts from May-August even though it was currently October). Also it seems they haven’t contacted anyone asking approval to be listed within the application, such as Mmeow.net or even Turbine (their class forums are listed, but you can only see the first post in the RSS feed), and it seems a little underhanded to me to make money off of someone else’s content especially without asking.
From what I’ve seen LOL Software makes a lot of these “readers” for different games, sports, events, gossip, etc. only changing the graphics and changing the RSS feeds that come preloaded into the application. And while the interface kind of looks neat, I think it gets in the way. Also a lot of the reviewers for older releases centered on other games claim that the sporadic RSS updates and system crashes are a constant for all of their different “products”. But again what I really have a problem with is the fact that they’re charging people for this and didn’t ask anyone permission to use their blogs. Yes, the RSS feeds are public and yes this can result in increased exposure for the blogs included; but in the end they didn’t do much work, didn’t ask for permission, and the overall experience is terrible.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I highly suggest just using Google Reader instead of this malarkey. And if anyone needs help setting it up or wants to know what blogs we follow we’ll be glad to put together a list that you can import into your readers.
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October 29, 2009 at 4:49 pm
What I think is crappy is they’re charging for poop that doesn’t work. Then on top of that awesome sites like mmeow will be shown in a negative context (not being updated since August). Boo to this entire company!
October 29, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I wish I would be unscrupulous enough to make money with such shit, too… this is really impudent of this… LOL Software… the name is almost a telling name…
October 29, 2009 at 7:42 pm
It says I’ve not updated MMeOw since August? haha
I guess this is what happens when anyone can put pretty much anything up for a buck. Glad you reviewed it!
October 29, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I think after I tried updating it 10 times during 48 hours it finally loaded recent posts, but after you posted something new it took about 4-5 times for it to get that to come down as well. Really odd considering it’s only pulling RSS feeds. I guess they figure they’ve got your cash so who cares.