I hunger for a feed
I like to keep up to date; In fact, since the Kindalogical days I have made a point of spending 1 hour every morning catching up with the latest news and reading blogs from my favourite designers and developers. For this reason, the day that I discovered the magic of Firefox’s bookmark toolbar, my morning ritual changed forever. It enabled me to have all these bookmarks in a folder and simply click the “Open all in tabs” menu-item, closing each tab as I’d finished catching up on that site.
Today, my bookmark toolbar, amongst all the other folders of bookmarks, has three folders devoted to these sites; “Daily”, “Weekly” and “Monthly”. Obviously sites that are updated regularly find their way into my Daily folder and sites that are updated less frequently fall into the other folders. However, even these are filling up like crazy as I discover new things and I’m starting to find that while some sites are updated daily one week, they may only get one post the next week. In other words; My system isn’t really working or scaling so well any more.
I can’t remember exactly where I found the link, but a LONG time ago I signed up to Google Reader, but never really used it. Well, I rediscovered it again recently and started putting all the blogs I read into that. I’m sure I don’t have to explain what a feed reader is to you highly intelligent-internet savvy people, but the revelation for me was that I, A WEB DEVELOPER, have been avoiding using feed readers for a while and have finally come to understand just how useful they are.
I’ve also noticed that there are a lot more RSS feeds than I have ever seen actually used by site visitors. Why is that? RSS is an awesome technology, but not so many people use it???
Our designer at work has a nifty way of catching up in the morning; He has put together one page with lots of little iframes that import his favourite columns/websites - making them available all in the one spot. But, isn’t this really what RSS and feed readers are “supposed” to achieve?
Now, without having done a lot of research etc… I have a hunch that the reason feeds aren’t doing as well as they should is because: Feed readers augment the “personality” and the “experience” that you get from visiting a website directly. To illustrate, I love visiting the website where my selected content comes from, because they are so beautifully designed and I have a relationship with the brand.
To put this into a practical context; I just went to my Google Reader profile before and noticed that because my list of subscribed sites is getting quite large, I’m finding it difficult to recognise which site is which and consequently who the author of each article is.
What I’d really like is a way to have all the bells and whistles that a feed reader can provide, while still retaining as much of the sites’ original branding and personality as possible. Now, before you add a comment to tell me about your favourite feed reader, I have a few requirements:
- It must, as much as possible, expose me to the original branding of the site. I know NetNewsWire shows the favicon next to the feed name, but I’d like a little more if I can get it.
- It must be remotely hosted (i.e. not something I download on my computer) as I need to be able to access it, with as little fuss as possible, from work and home.
- I’m tight; I don’t really want to pay for a feed reader when I can put up with Google Reader (which is of course free).
I recently changed the settings for posting comments, so that you no longer have to register as a user to the site. Which means you can post your feed reader recommendation hassle-free! ;-)
February 3rd, 2007 at 1:30 pm
speaking of capturing the look and feel…
you could help us who read your blog by rss by making your feed give us the whole update rather than just the first few lines - i’m forced to come to your site to read the entry! (try subscribing to your own rss feed in google reader, you’ll see what i mean!)
if the websites you really want the look and feel of are few in number, you know you can click the article title in ggl reader and it’ll take you to the site most of the time… depends how the feed is set up. that’s how i get to your site.
-d
February 3rd, 2007 at 3:00 pm
A solution… messy but might be ok on a fast connection…
Install CoolIris addon for firefox (oh, you use Opera now?) and manage your google reader subscriptions such that all the ones you want to actually see are in the same folder. Make that folder public and you’ll have a public rss that you can refer to from another reader. Make that other reader: NetVibes. Add the google public feed for your public folder to netvibes.
When you mouseover a link in the netvibes list (which contains your google reader feeds) a little cooliris icon appears, and you mouseover that and the page appears that you’re after.
If you have courage and time, give it a try - worked for me on dialup… yes, back to dialup…
February 4th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Sorry Deno, I just subscribed to my own feed the other day, but didn’t really take much notice of the cut-off text. You should see the full article now! ;-)
Yeah, I realise you just click on the title - but it would be nice if Google Reader, for example, would make it more obvious which site I’m reading from inside the reader itself (so that I don’t have to click through - that’s what I’m trying to avoid).
Dialup??? You poor, poor man… I will pray for you. :)
I’m still switching between Firefox and Safari these days, but I’m starting to think that one of the Firefox add-ons I have is to blame for the bugs I keep experiencing and not FF itself.
February 4th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
I think the reason that it’s hard to find an RSS that gives you the look ‘n’ feel of the originating site is because RSS is more about content than design.
However I understand your dilemma - I’m now starting to get confused as I read through personal blogs as to who has written what. Maybe you could put a request into the Google Reader team to see what they could do.