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| Author |
Message |
remmers
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RSS/Atom Users?
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Mar 2 15:08 UTC 2007 |
Is anybody here a user of RSS/Atom feeds? If so, what newsreader(s) do
you use?
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| 25 responses total. |
eprom
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response 1 of 25:
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Mar 2 18:41 UTC 2007 |
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.
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remmers
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response 2 of 25:
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Mar 5 20:48 UTC 2007 |
(I take it from the lack of response that most folks here don't use RSS.)
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mcnally
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response 3 of 25:
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Mar 5 23:07 UTC 2007 |
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.)
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kingjon
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response 4 of 25:
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Mar 5 23:45 UTC 2007 |
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.
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mary
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response 5 of 25:
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Mar 6 03:01 UTC 2007 |
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.
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eprom
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response 6 of 25:
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Mar 6 04:06 UTC 2007 |
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.
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remmers
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response 7 of 25:
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Mar 6 21:07 UTC 2007 |
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.
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mynxcat
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response 8 of 25:
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Mar 22 16:49 UTC 2007 |
I use bloglines, but it's a little buggy.
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remmers
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response 9 of 25:
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Mar 22 16:59 UTC 2007 |
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.
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mynxcat
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response 10 of 25:
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Mar 22 17:17 UTC 2007 |
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)
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remmers
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response 11 of 25:
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Mar 22 18:12 UTC 2007 |
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.
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fuzzball
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response 12 of 25:
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Mar 23 15:56 UTC 2007 |
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.
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h0h0h0
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response 13 of 25:
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Mar 24 02:43 UTC 2007 |
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.
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mary
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response 14 of 25:
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Mar 24 11:50 UTC 2007 |
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.
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remmers
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response 15 of 25:
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Mar 24 12:47 UTC 2007 |
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.
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remmers
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response 16 of 25:
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Apr 1 14:31 UTC 2007 |
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.
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