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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?

#322

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.

It is the same in the media industry, RSS is everywhere. It is just that the end users seldom see it..

Could you elaborate on this, please?

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

#323
The key thing to know about RSS is that most of the real news sources, those that have actual reporters who go out and find news, have RSS feeds. Reuters, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the BBC...

Here's Reuters Top News.[1] Just the news, no ads, no clickbait. Reuters is useful because their RSS feed contains a readable story summary. Many RSS feeds just have a truncated sentence and a link. Both CNN [2] and Fox News [3] are like that. Voice of America is at the other extreme - the whole story is on RSS.[4]

[1] http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/topNews [2] http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss [3] http://www.foxnews.com/about/rss/ [4] https://www.voanews.com/rssfeeds

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

#324

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…

Indeed. I just tried Feedly on Android and it just gets in the way. It's awful. Suggestions are disgustingly location aware (why am I getting only feeds from my mother language?).

I need folders and a panel to read my rss feeds, everything else is fancy SPAM.

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

#325
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.

After Google Reader went away I was actively looking for a reader where, by giving the creator money, I was ensuring it would stick around. And also where I was the customer rather than the product. There's a free version you can use to try it out but it's limited in the number of feeds. And $24 a year isn't a high price for what I'm getting.

Looks like it's $36/year now.

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

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The dev has always been really responsive and closely watching the community, while Feedly focuses on premium support and feels more corporate. Several features are free: Unlimited sources and feeds, entire search for your own feeds, unlimited tags, sharing via inoreader email There is also: loading of mobilized content via single click/key, better shortcuts, comprehensive tagging management, more settings, better se…

Now that I'm trying Inoreader, the killer feature for me is being able to open items in background tabs. Too bad that requires a plugin for Firefox.

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

#327
post #55

RSS is awesome. Bring on its resurgence. But. It is fundamentally not fit as a Facebook or social media replacement because of it's lack of simple commenting support. It suits some curmudgeonly old farts like me, perhaps. But even I want to feedback sometimes or join in the discussion (hence this comment). Are there solutions that a content creator can provide, via RSS, without requiring its readers to install partic…

There is ActivityPub: https://activitypub.rocks/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16222478 https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://github.com/w3c/activitypub But not enough implementations of it yet that tie into blog content.

I very much look forward to the day when ActivityPub becomes more pervasive in platforms...beyond websites/apps that interact directly with other sites/apps and other use-cases, ActivityPub should be a boon to comment systems. (I myself am in favor of decentralized comment systems...then again I'm biased IN FAVOR of most any decentralized platforms/systems. ;-)

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

#329

I miss Sage++ (Higmmers Edition). [1] Sidebar RSS reader for Firefox. It was perfect for my use case. (Now its dead due to WebExtension) [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/sagepp-higmmers-...

So do I, but I've discovered a reasonable replacement: Brief.[0]

0: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/brief/

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't read many blogs that have TeX formulas, but that's still a nice feature for when they do pop up.
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