Newsburst, an online aggregator from CNet made a splash this week.

So, since Bloglines is slow today, I figured I’d give it a shot.

Found the site, figured out how to register. Had some errors with registration (ahem, there was no “computer” or “internet” category for what industry I worked in, nor was there a “job type” option in the pull down (just a “please select”).

But, it’s new, I could handle those. Muddled my way through. Confirmation came. I confirmed. Got to the main page and there’s already news there. Wtf? Click “Manage Sources”, delete the two they’ve added for me (how nice).

Then I export my Bloglines subscriptions, and for the life of me I can’t figure out how to import them into Newsburst. Yes, there’s an “Export OPML” feature, which is nice. But there’s no import? How weird…

Click “Help”. Here’s what I get:

What is Newsburst?
Newsburst is a personal information tool. Pick your sources of information and collect them all in one place.

More to come soon…

Feedback
We appreciate your feedback–please send comments.

Okay. Again, first week. Bound to be issues, right?

I click “Add Source” from the top menu. Aha! A way to import! Not exactly the most intuitive way to import, but I DID figure it out!

Okay, so I click “Import” (after finding my OPML file) and I get a 404 page. Wtf? Okay, again, first week graces and I hit the back button, at which time I get my categories imported properly. Cool! Let’s see if the feeds are there!

Click “Dashboard” (I’m guessing this is “home”, right?).

…

And, what the hell is this? A 2-column, summary view?

Here’s a view of it:

Newsburst

I really don’t like this 2-column summary thing. I scan articles. Having to go back and forth on titles and descriptions is hard. Plus, the colour contrast is difficult.

The tagline to Newsburst is “read differently” and, yeah, that’s just what they’re doing. Except, I don’t want to read differently. I want to read more efficiently, and this doesn’t make it easy to scan the news.