Today my RSS reader NetNewsWire reseted itself, I lost all the feeds (500+) I’ve been collecting in the past years. I don’t know what happened, but all I get was the default feed list: mac.com, BBC, Wired etc. First of all, I said bye to NetNewsWire and removed it from my computer. Although I like its clean and fast interface, I can’t take this serious error.
Then I started to look for new feed readers.
Google Reader. Well I use it sometimes, but it is very slow for my reading. Also it manages the feed list really badly. For example, it uses RSS icon after RSS icon to represent the feeds, very bad. I can’t scan them easily. I think Google Reader developers are just lazy, why not just use feeds’ own 16×16 icons like many other readers do. Share, share with a note, star, tag are necessary for large-scale conversations (Greg Smiths’s post). But these features overlap with the services I already effectively use: Del.icio.us, Twitter, etc.
Attensa. Works quite fast, but it has a poorly designed visual interface that I don’t want to stare at much. Attensa’s AttentionStream technology combines content (e.g, authors, titles, tags) with your attention to provide a relevancy ranking. Sounds exciting but the interface does not surface this “underlying” technology well. Place of the numbers, color saturation, contrasts, and font size are all poorly composed I think. It may get better if I use it more, but current prioritized lists are not relevant to my interests. If you do machine learning, please show it, show the progress, what you learn about me.
NewsGator. Slow and poor information design. It has some filtering through AideRSS, which ranks feed items based on comments, Del.icio.us history, Diggs, Tweets, etc. But this filtering does not make much sense to me, because the popularity based ranking models can not match my diverse interests well. Also I read my favorite feeds just in time, so as a paradox, items are probably being ranked after I read them.
Fav.or.it. Tried a little bit, its interface is just confusing. Too much unnecessary information here and there. Comment reading is good. Integration with existing sharing services (Del.icio.us, Twitter etc.) is good. Reading experience is bad.
FeedEachOther. Many features, poor information design. Comment reading good, friend connection good, feed list (OPML) sharing good, readability bad. I don’t care much about feed recommendations, because I already find interesting and related feeds as I use the web. Again locked in sharing, no integration with existing services.
There are many readers out there, these are the ones that I found interesting enough to give it a try. There are also custom home pages (Netvibes, iGoogle, Live.com etc.) that act as readers, I just can’t touch those at all. Every reader has one or two unique feature that is good, but none of the readers is good enough to help me deal with the complex information flows. If you use something good, please post it in the comments. For now, I think I will stop reading feeds.
Update: Checking some of the console based unix feed readers on this list.
http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/i_want_the_mutt_of_feed_readers.html
* Images above are shots from a sketch based on a flocking algorithm that I was playing with recently.
I try to use NetNewsWire every time someone mentions it, and I really appreciate the speed and usability of a native desktop client for RSS. But I got used to using Google Reader in any browser on any platform (iPhone, computer, vt-100 terminals) I just can’t find a better solution for synchronization and ubiquity.
eger mac kullaniyorsan ki oyle gibi vienna’yi bir dene baya basit ve kullanisli (http://www.vienna-rss.org/vienna2.php) ayrica google reader bence gercekten cok basarili ve hizli bir feed reader. sahsen kisa yollarina ve herseyine okadar cok alistimki baska feed reader kullanamiyorum.
@cfq thanks, well as I said I don’t find Google Reader fast enough and don’t like its locked in sharing features.
@kelepce hat?rlatt???n iyi oldu. NetNewsWire Light kullan?rken Vienna’ya denemeye ba?lam??t?m. Her?eyden önce aç?k kaynakl? olmas? umut verici, ancak NetNewsWire kadar h?zl? de?il ve arayüzü biraz problemli (yukar?da sayd???m pek çok problem var).
anladim. ben sahsen vienna pek kullanmadim sadece kurdum. “newslife” (http://www.thinkmac.co.uk/newslife/) diye bir rss reader var ama parali olmasi cok anlamsiz. ayrica bir de “rss menu” (http://www.edot-studios.com/webgroups2/index.php?menu_item=212) var ama pek ilgilenecegini sanmiyorum. onun disinda da pek fazla bir alternatif yok ne yazikki benim bildigim. bu arada google reader icin bahsettigin yavasliktan kastin tam olarak ne anlayamadim ama browserinla alakali olabilir bu. ornegin firefox 2’de biraz hantal olmasina karsin safari’de daha iyi.
vienna gayet iyi. ama netweswire ?n newsgator deste?i vard? san?r?m tüm feed listesini newsgator üzerinde yedekliyordu.
I use RSSOwl and haven’t had any problems of it losing feeds. Best of all it’s open-source and cross-platform. Not so good is that it’s java based and thus has a less-than-pretty UI. But it works well enough for me, and integrates well enough with OS X so that I can read the articles I want to within the browser quite easily.
bugun yeni bir feed reader’dan haberim oldu, su an deniyorum. adobe air platformu uzerine gelistirilmis gayet kullanisli ve farkli bir yapisi var.
http://www.snackr.net/
@kelepce yes Google Reader is faster on Safari, but not fast enough. I especially don’t like the way feed lists are organized.
@matrushka NetNewsWire + NewsGator integration is not visible.
@nick I will try RSSOwl http://www.rssowl.org/
I assume it will be slow because of Java.
@kelepce Snackr is interesting, but I if it is bugging you every time a new feed comes, not a good idea. I prefer not to keep my reader open, I’d rather check it out two three times a day. When I open my reader, what I want to see is not everything at once but the most important ones at first.