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It's time to head back to RSS?

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Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#291

RSS never went away. Podcasting has made careers (e.g. deboarah francis-white, roman mars, andy & helen zaltzman, ollie mann and many others). The technological underpinning of podcasting is entirely RSS. And it ain't going away, or getting embraced and extended any time soon.

I love how the term podcasting outlived dedicated personal music devices. For me it's testament to how solid the idea was.

Guess "box sets" is also doing that now everyone streams TV series.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#292
post #287

I really just want a local app for doing this that doesn't suck. Google Reader really masterfully killed all the momentum behind local RSS clients, I guess.

On what OS? And what are your criteria for "doesn't suck"?

Windows, and I guess what I mean is that I can generally read the articles without having to open them in my Web browser (which something like Thunderbird isn't really good for). If you have a recommendation I'd be happy to take a look at it.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#293
I recently started using RSS again after a long break. Like many of you I decided to build my own reader. Since RSS/Atom is quite easy to work with I didn't take me long to get something usable.

I built a Python library[0] to parse feeds and a Django app using it[1]. It is not ready for prime time yet, but I use it daily and like it.

[0] https://github.com/NicolasLM/atoma

[1] https://github.com/NicolasLM/feedsubs

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#294
Maybe MRSS has a chance. I am old enough to remember the first go around at all this. I remember reading an article during the 1990s on O'Reilly about RSS, semantic web, etc. I used to read Dave Winer's blog pretty regularly. I remember being skeptical at the time and it turns out my skepticism was prescient.

Nowadays it seems common to generate MRSS feeds for podcasts and video playlists. Devices like Alexa, Google Home, etc. are taking advantage of this format. Instead of it being used to "free-the-web" it is being used by content aggregators to ease vendor lock-in. This lock-in could not be achieved with textual content (where it is easy to write a competing application) but it can be achieved with hardware devices.

I'm even more cynical now than I was in the 1990's. I do not see content creators providing unfettered access to their content. The whole point of vendor platforms like Facebook and newer devices like Alexa is that the content is marshalled by the platform NOT the user. Content creators will give that ground to another corporation that they can negotiate with but I don't believe they will ever give it to users directly.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that strange, every site on which I've looked for it has RSS/atom feeds where relevant, but hide them (eg this, github, etc). Interestingly enough, Firefox has a "feeds" section when looking at page info, which will show RSS feeds included in the meta tags (which they all seem to be). So really, I've never stopped using RSS, not sure how to go "back" to it. I understand the whole thing with Twitter killing it but…

> I use RSS as todo lists and that still works wonders How as todo lists?

Mostly versions of projects too small to notify you by email (but still important enough to keep up to date).

Edit: To elaborate, gitlab and github have RSS feeds of tags, which devs use as releases. New tag = new release = another item in my RSS feed. Which means there's something for me to do.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#296
post #60

I've been a (paying) user of NewsBlur ( https://newsblur.com/ ) since Google Reader shut down and haven't looked back. p.s: In HN spirit, it also happens to be one developer's side-project-turned-profitable-business, and the "social" features a totally non-intrusive, but there if you want to know what people are sharing and commenting on.

Came here to upvote Newsblur + RSS, both are awesome!

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#297

Have been using https://inoreader.com since the Year Google Reader closed, and imho, it's better than Feedly. I'm also usually reading HN via my full-text feed. Meaning, I don't have to load a link every time, I focus on the articles first, and I can easily pre-load everything for offline reading on mobile. I think, in case of RSS such online services are superior to self-hosted solutions - whether server or client -…

What makes it better than Feedly? I've been using Feedly since Google Reader closed and I think it pretty much nails this simple tool. How is it even possible to be much better?

I dropped Feedly for the most basic reason possible: it didn't display my feeds readably. I read a lot of math blogs and the TeX formulas in them didn't show up in Feedly (and maybe a few did appear but with incorrect spacing). Inoreader renders them just fine.

This was years ago, and back there was already a feature request on Feedly's website asking for this to be fixed. I just took a look at that request it looks exactly the same, so either they haven't done anything about this (most likely) or they fixed it but forgot to close the issue.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#298

I've tried Feedly but my goodness, the corporate language is such a turn off. I just want a feed reader, I don't want to "Fuel your team's success," "Enrich articles with unique insights," "Automate your content workflows," "Reinforce your digital brand". These features may be cool and useful, but the way they're sold makes me gag. I used my ad blocker to remove the "Well done!" that appears when everything is marked…

I’m viewing RSS on feedly.com for years. I just checked the features in Feedly Pro. It says that the free tier is limited to 100 sources, while Pro gets you unlimited sources. What does this mean? I’ve already added over 500 sources and it seems to work fine.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#300
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Podcasting feels like an alternate reality where none of the massive players took over and everything stayed federated.

Yep. It's perplexing that a YouTube for podcasts (with centralized ad serving and similar profit sharing) hasn't emerged. The space is endearing - maybe that's why it is so vibrant?

Isn't that what iTunes is? In the beginning, it seemed like the concept of a podcast and iTunes were intertwined.
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