Grex Web Conference

Item 5: RSS/Atom Users?

Is anybody here a user of RSS/Atom feeds?  If so, what newsreader(s) do 
you use?

On Windows I use Thunderbird, I like how you can create 
a hierarchy and have individual feeds within sub-folders
(world news,blogs,science, local news, etc)..

For FreeBSD i'm using Claws-mail with the RSS plugin. Its 
not as great IMHO, but it has a very small footprint.

(I take it from the lack of response that most folks here don't use RSS.)

Although it's been evangelized by some people whose judgment I respect
(including you, herr doctor professor remmers..) I still have yet to
see the point of Atom or RSS (for me, personally..  I can think of
situations where it'd make things much easier from a machine or 
programmer point of view..  I'm just not especially interested in those
scenarios.)

I use raggle, a Ruby CLI reader. It and snownews are the only two CLI RSS
readers in the Gentoo package tree (RSS isn't important enough to me to go to
the trouble of manually installing something), and snownews got its
database/cache/whatever corrupted within about the first week of my using it,
so I switched to raggle.

I use NetNewsWire. I've tried others but I always come back. 

RSS essentially turns the intenet into a customized conference.  I see 
what's new.  It remembers what I've viewed and won't display it again 
unless I ask for it.  I can forget content. I can mark as unread and come 
back later for another look.  And my list of favorites is always waiting 
to dazzle me.  I'd guess I'm following about 150 feeds at this point.  
That would be far to tedious to be practical without RSS.

Some of my friends have blogs, but update them maybe every other month.
Rather than manually checking each site every so often, my RSS reader 
can check for updates to all my subscriptions within a few seconds. 
Thats the biggest benefit for me, since I subscribe to alot of Flickr 
and Livejournal feeds.

Mary's description in #5 of the RSS user experience is right on; it makes 
the experience of keeping up with what's new on your favorite websites (as 
long as they support an RSS feed) very similar to that of keeping up with 
what's new in the conferences on Grex.

If you're unclear on how that works, I'd suggest taking out a free account 
on the web-based newsreader http://bloglines.com, subscribing to a few of 
their suggested feeds, and then periodically revisiting your bloglines 
account every day (or more frequently).  You'll see pretty quickly what 
it's all about.

I use bloglines, but it's a little buggy.

Right.  I started with Bloglines - path of least resistance, since it's 
web-based and free - but dropped it a couple of years ago and now 
primarily use NetNewsWire on the Mac.  Very slick and featureful.  I took 
a look at Bloglines again recently - still has the same somewhat clunky 
user interface, unfortunately.

Are there any other web-based newsreaders? I usually use them in snatches of
5 minutes between different tasks, and rarely from home. (Pretty much how I
use Grex, actually)

There are lots of web-based newsreaders; you can see a long list at
http://www.newsonfeeds.com/faq/aggregators/.  I haven't given any of
them a serious try, but I recall that Rojo (http://www.rojo.com) and 
Rocket (http://www.rocketinfo.com) looked like they might be decent.

i used to subscribe to a few small ones.
nothing anymore.
flickr has a few i subscribed to but they didnt update often enough.

my PSP allows RSS signups, but i didnt see that being used.

I use bloglines.com because it's webbased and i dont have to track what was
read across a number of different computers.   I've heard google reader is
super badass awesome though.

NetNewsWire has a syncing feature.  This isn't the same as web-based, as 
you still need to have NetNewsWire installed on the computers you're 
using.  But it works great to keep multiple machines up to date as to your 
bookmarks and what's read and new.

Re resp:13: I tried Google Reader when it was fairly new and wasn't 
impressed.  Inspired by your comment, I just had another look at it.
WOW, what an improvement!  Slick interface, impressively fast, and
seriously Ajaxified for a desktop-like experience.  (Requires a
JavaScript-enabled browser, of course.)

Plus - important point - it supports OPML for import/export of 
subscriptions, so using Google Reader doesn't lock you in to it.
(OPML = Outline Processor Markup Language, an XML format for
outlines commonly used for storing lists of RSS feeds.)

I notice that Google Reader supports a form of "social bookmarking."
Marking a news item as "shared" adds it to a list accessible via a
unique URL associated with your Google account.  Other people can
view the list on the web or subscribe to it via RSS.  This gives 
you a way of alerting people to items that you find to be
interesting.

I'm seriously tempted to import my NetNewsWire subscriptions to
Google Reader and try it out for a few days.  If I bump into some
things I don't like, I can always go back.

Well, I imported my RSS subscriptions to Google Reader and tried it out 
- for about five minutes.  I like the control a well-designed desktop 
GUI, and slick as it is, the Ajaxified Web isn't quite there yet.

That said - if you do need a web-based RSS reader, check out Netvibes
(http://www.netvibes.com).  Basically, it lets you build your own portal 
using predefined widgets plus any RSS feeds you choose to import.  You 
can organize them by tabs, re-arrange via drag-and-drop.  There are 
widgets for interfacing to Gmail, Flickr, Ebay, various search engines, 
and a bunch of other things.  Audio and video podcasts can be played 
directly within the web interface.  If you like to have all your 
websurfing organized in one central location, this might work for you.  
I plan to stick with a desktop application for RSS, though.

I use lastRSS to display feeds on my website. lastRSS is a php script 
to convert feeds to readable content. When I find an RSS feed that I 
want to keep an eye on I simply add it to to my web page. This way not 
only do I get to follow the other web sites I am able to offer a unique 
sampling of dynamic content to visitors of my website. By having these 
feeds on the webpage I can access from anywhere. I like to keep my 
homepage as a portal for my own web excursions and if visitors to it 
can use it too, good for them.

Sounds very cool.  I should do something similar for my website.

http://allthingsd.com/20120813/is-apples-mobile-rss-reader-down-for-the-cou
nt/

It seems that both Google and Apple are essentially deprecting support for
RSS/Atom feeds in their browser offerings (I was less concerned with the
service disruption in that article than the removal of RSS support from Safari
6 and Chrome).

I don't think many people use RSS.  I have seen it many times on sites, but
I just never thought to try it out.  But then again, I am one of those people
who can't tolerate more then one email a month from sites like linkedin or
facebook.  I much rather go to a site when I'm ready rather then keep getting
a flow of information while I'm away from the site.

Plus, if I understand the function of RSS correctly (to receive updated
information from a site as it happens) then the facebook newsfeed and twitter
have taken over that role with annoying large volumes of content to sift
through.

I'm a huge fan of RSS.  There are about 50 websites that I like to follow 
where the commentary is wider and deeper than what Twitter and Facebook 
allows.  Without RSS I'd need to go to each one to decide if there is new 
and interesting content.  With RSS I see what's new in a "screening depth" 
I select.  I can save items for later review or even mark all as read. 

I agree on the utility of RSS/Atom, but I wonder if they aren't becoming more
irrelvant as time passes.

I think it's safe to say YES

I've used new feed readers in the past, but since there's only about a
half-dozen sites I care to read regularly I've found it easier to just make
a round of the sites and cut out the feed reader middle-man.

I enjoy email updates where possible. I never remember which URLs even
if bookmarked.  What woudl make life great is an audible reader.

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