Coders can't design software ...

... and, apparently, those who design websites don't know IA. It's pathetic, really.

On technorati's "Import Favorite" page there's a whole list of other aggregators and how to get them to spit out OPML. For technorati itself? You'd better know that there's a teeny little OPML link in the top-right corner of one of the two blog-favorite pages cuz you sure won't find it obviously presented! (My other peeve from today is that BlogLines' rather nice interface won't allow me to delete an entire folder. I wanted to dump that set before importing the others. Select a block, yes ... but not Select Folder / Trash. Why not? Is that martian? It's a perfectly valid task flow. "But that's not the way we want you to do it", in effect. Meh.

Soooooo after getting the OPML from technorati and consolidating it with that from BlogLines and Google, I came over to the new kid on the block ... earthlink.net's offering. Nice design ... pretty. And here I am on the "Add Source" page. A search facility, that's cute. And a very nice multi-tiered presentation of Recommended Sources. And ... WTF? No place to import OPML? (I hate the "blame the user" reply smoke and mirror tech types hide behind ... it's soooooo M$.) And WTF², cant' even add a site by URL? "Tip: You can add a source from any web site you visit. Learn how ?" Well thanks a lot, twit, not stop holding my hand and let me upload my OPML!!

I'd love to think software and systems were intentional ... but there's precious little evidence of that.