RSS aggregators
My quest tonight (while cranking the new Liz Phair album which just showed up on my doorstep): find a good RSS aggregator or newsreader. For those who don't know what an RSS aggregator is, it's basically a piece of client software that allows you to quickly pull in posts from websites that syndicate their content in RSS (RDF Site Summary, though some refer to it as Really Simple Syndication). A lot of weblogs and news sites syndicate their content in RSS, and it's a lot more efficient to browse through headlines in an aggregator than it is to click through to every website. I just recently syndicated my weblog. You can easily tell when a site has updated its content, and you can browse through headlines and jump from site to site much more quickly than in a browser. I can't remember the last time another piece of client software had the potential to increase my productivity this much. If you read lots of blogs everday, look into one, and if you currently receive my weblog by e-mail you might consider switching to an RSS newsreader.
Does anyone have any recommended RSS aggregators? I'm working my way through some of the aggregators listed here and here. I haven't found one that grabs me yet. The HTML display capabilities vary widely, and most are fairly bare bones. Where are the options to save articles, to search or filter them, to choose how you want to open hyperlinks? Some of them cost $20 to $30, and considering the limited functionality that seems steep. Of course, you can also use the RSS-to-IMAP service from Blogstreet which I mentioned yesterday. I've loaded it up and have started receiving posts at my work and personal e-mail accounts. Right away I've become annoyed with sites that only syndicate their headlines and part of their descriptions (posts) instead of the entire descriptions.
Speaking of which, I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft simply build a free RSS aggregator into Outlook itself. Most of the aggregators look pretty much like Outlook anyway, and the functionality is fairly similar. Of course, I still only use the basic functionality of Outlook, and considering how much time I spend in that application you'd think it'd be worth learning some advanced tools. I blame the bloated and unintuitive interface. [Aside: Someone needs to come along and build a better e-mail application. It's the primary application for so many people in this country, and yet we still use e-mail essentially the same way I used my Pine e-mail program in college.]
FeedDemon looks to be the most promising of the aggregators to date. Can't wait to try it out. I'm fairly certain by year end we'll have a whole suite of free RSS aggregators to choose from. Why'd I wait so long?
Does anyone have any recommended RSS aggregators? I'm working my way through some of the aggregators listed here and here. I haven't found one that grabs me yet. The HTML display capabilities vary widely, and most are fairly bare bones. Where are the options to save articles, to search or filter them, to choose how you want to open hyperlinks? Some of them cost $20 to $30, and considering the limited functionality that seems steep. Of course, you can also use the RSS-to-IMAP service from Blogstreet which I mentioned yesterday. I've loaded it up and have started receiving posts at my work and personal e-mail accounts. Right away I've become annoyed with sites that only syndicate their headlines and part of their descriptions (posts) instead of the entire descriptions.
Speaking of which, I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft simply build a free RSS aggregator into Outlook itself. Most of the aggregators look pretty much like Outlook anyway, and the functionality is fairly similar. Of course, I still only use the basic functionality of Outlook, and considering how much time I spend in that application you'd think it'd be worth learning some advanced tools. I blame the bloated and unintuitive interface. [Aside: Someone needs to come along and build a better e-mail application. It's the primary application for so many people in this country, and yet we still use e-mail essentially the same way I used my Pine e-mail program in college.]
FeedDemon looks to be the most promising of the aggregators to date. Can't wait to try it out. I'm fairly certain by year end we'll have a whole suite of free RSS aggregators to choose from. Why'd I wait so long?