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Ask HN: Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck?
31–40 of 79 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm using essentially the same strategy. Basically I split feeds in two categories: "Fresh" ones I either read on the spot, or mark-all-as-read. These are the ones I usually check frequently, and very quickly. And I don't have to feel bad about marking all as read :-) "Evergreens" are ones I like to read entirely, but not necessarily now. I'm using Google Reader, but these days mostly through the splendid Reeder on t…
I really like Reeder for the iPhone. Google Reader fluid app on the desktop and Reeder for the iPhone works great for me.
Reeder for iPad is great, too; really fast UX.
Re: Ask HN: Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck?
#33Free tip if you want to write a better RSS reader: research Usenet newsreaders like trn or tin. Many of the problems with RSS that everyone is grappling with now were solved (to varying degrees of success) decades ago. Usenet news and RSS aren't 100% analogous of course, but they are similar enough that there's a lot of man-years of thought which can be reused.
Re: Ask HN: Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck?
#34I wondered this myself until I hit upon the simple solution of deleting feeds with too low a signal to noise ratio (for my personal tastes). Expecting RSS readers to tease out relevance means having to give them an idea of what's relevant to you. This seems to be a self-inflicted problem on the part of people who use feed readers. I've tended to think I "needed" to follow more than I could possibly consume and retain…
I've had a similar transition here - I've pruned almost all high-volume blogs from my Google Reader, and focused more on people whose opinion I value very highly, Twitter, or social news sites (HN/Reddit/etc.)
So far it's worked very well. I still seem to find out about everything I'd care about, but have a post volume on Google Reader of around 60 posts a day. I star anything longer I'm interested in for later reading on iPad/iPhone (either through Reeder or Instapaper).
I probably sort through several times more tweets, but that's something I'm far more likely to do when I have 30-60 seconds - so it's spread out throughout the day, and anything longer winds up in Instapaper for me to do at a later date.
In short: Try social filtering. Find people who share interests and blog/Tweet/etc. about them, and let them be your filter.
Re: Ask HN: Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck?
#35I haven't tested it, but I'm intrigued by Shuan Inman's Fever reader ( http://feedafever.com/ ). Basically the idea is that you separate your feeds into two distinct types: essential feeds that you read completely, and supplemental, high-volume feeds (aggregator-type blogs, like Engadget). Then the essentials are cross-referenced with the supplementals to see what you're likely to be interested in. I have a similar s…
I use Fever for my feeds, I simply love it. I tried others but this is definitely the best one I found so far.
Re: Ask HN: Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck?
#36Reeder on the iPad is spectacularly good.
Perhaps you could give some reasons why?
Immaculate UI/UX. Whether in landscape or portrait orientation, there are many clever flourishes: it uses Tweetie's "pull up to refresh" mechanism for moving between articles in a feed; or you can swipe an article left or right to return to the feed index; or you can pinch the article/feed to return to all of your feeds. In a feed index view, you can swipe a list item to the left or right to either toggle the read state or the starred state.
The feed index is designed very similarly to the iPad Photos app: you can either pinch open a folder to view the feeds within it separately, or you can tap it to view all of the articles in a combined view; similarly, you can pinch open a individual feed to preview of the articles within it.
Additionally, Reeder caches articles and images for offline reading; and the top-level feed organization is pretty sensible, too... it's separated into 3 sections: read, unread, and starred. It's also extremely fast, having been rewritten to use SQLite instead of CoreData.
Re: Ask HN: Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck?
#37I use and love Google Reader. I use the List mode (as opposed to Expanded) and my work flow is the same whether I'm at my desktop, iPhone, iPad, or Blackberry.
A handful of feeds I insist on reading everything, which means I hit J-J-J-J to get through them all. But most I merely skim the unread titles for things that look interesting, and when I'm done I hit Mark As Read to clean up the rest.
I like how I can do this at feed-level, category-level, or with all unread items at once.
And if I'm mobile and I want to see something from my desktop, I star it.
Admittedly, the last time I considered using a thick-client reader was way, way back in 2004 when I was still Windows-only, and I wasn't happy with anything I saw. I've used Google Reader since it was released in 2005, and I've had no reason to use anything else.
Re: Ask HN: Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck?
#38If you're willing to forgo graphics, I find newsbeuter (http://www.newsbeuter.org) to be a great reader.
It has excellent mutt-esque key bindings, amazing customizability, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck?
#39Is it the RSS readers that suck or the content itself? If you can avoid these sites that just aggregate content or provide second and third hand accounts of the same items it's easy to trim down your reading list.