The RSS Advantage

Reading and digesting news about RSS is becoming a full-time job on it’s own! It is almost impossible to keep up with it, never mind blog about it, so starting from today I’ll be including a snippet with links to the RSS news items that I have found the most interesting.

1. RSS meets knowledge management by Martin LaMonica from CNet has a short article about a start-up company called Attensa that has an RSS reader that analyzes the content of the news items and the user behavior. If you are a conspiracy theorist or a George Orwell ‘1984′ fan this article will scare you…
2. Microsoft takes RSS to the Max .. if you’ll pardon the pun. Michael Arrington from TechCrunch has a short review of the software in his article Microsoft Launches Desktop Feed Reader. This is a short article, but the comments on it are long, entertaining and numerous. Enjoy!
   Note: This is currently beta software but judging from the screenshots it looks pretty cool.

Technorati Tags: RSS Readers

A short time ago Google released their own web based RSS reader. I decided to check it out today to see if was any good. One thing to note is that it’s still a “beta” product and like most tools from Google it is free.

To access the Google Reader you will need a Google account, if you don’t have one you can create one on the same page. Before you continue reading I must confess that I hate web-based applications… so there is my disclaimer! These are my findings:
It took me a while to get used to the interface and it was confusing at first. The web page is split into three sections:

A. The top bar where you have the following options: Home, Read items, Starred, Subscriptions and Labels. This is where I got confused because I am used to the top bar of a web page being a navigation menu taking me to different pages on a site. The first three items (home, read and starred) are actually filters on your news items and the last three items are “management” items.

B. The next section is the left pane that displays your list of news items. A box surrounds the current news item and the item is shown on the right pane. A list of “controls” (top, up, down, refresh and page up) is located at the top of the pane for you to move through the items. At the bottom of the left pane you can sort items by date or automatically. There is also an additional filter there where you can select whether to display or hide your read items. Next to each list item is a small star that you click on to star/unstar the news item.

C. The right hand pane displays your selected news item. There are also additional options here to unsubscribe from the RSS feed, email the item and blog about it (if you have a blogger account).

So what do I think of Google’s reader? I don’t like it and I definitely won’t be using it anytime soon. The interface is semi-confusing and news item control is spread all over the place.

A few of the things that I don’t like:

1. You have two different places on the screen to apply filtering on your items - the top pane to select all, read or starred items and then the left pane to hide or display read items.
2. If I want to star an item I need to go to the left pane, to keep an item unread I have to go to the right pane.
3. When I subscribe to a feed I want to get a complete list of items from that feed. I don’t want to click a link saying “To return more items from source…” to get all the news items.
4. I like to have a list of subscriptions “on hand” so that when I select one I only get it’s new items.

On the plus side of the equation these are the two things that I like:

1. I can sort my news items by date
2. I have a direct link to Blogger to blog about a news item.

Selection of an RSS reader is a matter of personal choice and preference. If you use Google Reader and like it feel free to comment below or, if you agree with me, share what you don’t like about Google Reader.

Technorati Tags: RSS Readers

An RSS reader is a tool that reads an RSS feed and displays its contents to you. To avoid getting to technical and as another way to of describing it, think of an RSS reader as a “modified” email client that goes and checks different email inboxes (RSS feed sites) for messages, then it displays them to you. You just add your favorite RSS feeds to your collection and the reader automatically checks each one of them for content. When it finds new content it brings it to your attention so that you can choose to view it at your convenience.

Oh yes, before I forget, some people call RSS Readers “RSS aggregators” to keep things interesting… so bare that in mind when you are searching for one. There are a wide variety of readers available, most are free and some - usually with more advanced features - can be purchased. One thing for sure is that you are definitely not stuck for choice when it comes to selecting one. In my following posts I will discuss the various types of readers available to you. For the sake of simplicity - and because it is within everyone’s budget - I will stick to the free ones.

Technorati Tags: RSS reader; RSS Beginner