Of course, this would require some work on the part of bloggers to identify the source of their information to enable readers to create such a hierarchy of related posts. So instead of seeing a zillion posts, I should see one – the root post to which all the other RSS posts point either directly or indirectly through other intermediate posts. What I’d like to see is an RSS reader that examines the links in various RSS feeds and assembles a hierarchy of feeds on a particular topic. Someone needs to take RSS aggregators/readers to the next level. For example, last week every one of these sites broadcast the latest story about Gmail, or a variant thereof – and there I was, drowning in a mass of RSS posts from different sites on exactly the same topic. With RSS, every one of those sites you valued for aggregating news suddenly looks remarkably similar.
Who would have thought that 6 billion people could generate so much information? Suddenly I’m dealing with the problem of cleaning out my RSS aggregator in a computer-age equivalent of beat the clock. And then the updates come streaming in…and in…and in…and in. The problem with RSS is you start drowning in information, and most of that information is essentially identical.Įveryone starts assembling their list of RSS feeds by hitting the big sites first – Slashdot, Wired, CNet, Scripting News, Boing Boing, and anyone else that appears in the top ten of Technorati. I, like any self-respecting, cutting-edge geek, want the newest information and I want it milliseconds after it’s been captured by sensor-studded bloggers on the scene to capture the moment. It’s not that RSS itself is a bad idea – serving out content in an XML format that can be easily parsed and aggregated is a great idea. I’ll tell you what: a giant pile of my spare time, that’s what. Using RSS to do the heavy lifting seemed like a good idea to keep me informed – hey, if even the Canadian government is hip to RSS, what have I got to lose?
Shrook rss reader install#
I like both Sage and Newsfox, but I can’t be committed to using just one browser at the moment.I’m embarrassed to say I only bothered to install an RSS aggregator last week, after I became painfully aware that the bookmarks folder in my browser is the web equivalent of a roach motel: web sites check in, but they don’t ever get checked out. I really could live with any of them, though. They are both very similar in their simplicity and effectiveness, but as of right now (April 2008), Feedreader is more current, while Sharpreader almost seems abandoned. My personal favourite is Feedreader, but I also like Sharpreader. I’ve used Liferea (on Linux), Sharpreader, Feedreader and RSS Bandit myself, as well as the Firefox add-ons Sage, Wiz, Newsfox and Brief. This is just using a feed reader as a kind of bookmark system, as opposed to a real feed aggregator.
Personally, I think that if you’re only going to check out your feeds one feed at a time, you don’t gain much over just going to the websites where those feeds originate. Browsers don’t, and so they are next to useless for this. Programs like Sharpreader, Feedreader, RSS Bandit, etc. This is very handy and time saving when you have that kind of need. You put all of the feeds you want in one folder, and then you can see them all together when reading the whole folder – all in one list, that is. For a simple example, let’s say you need to keep up with, say, medical news. I think some who are saying they are satisfied with the built-in feed readers in the various browsers (IE7, firefox, Opera) must have simple needs that do not require an aggregator.īy aggregator, I mean a feed reader that allows you to see all the news items.
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