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Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

neflabs.com

341–350 of 358 posts

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#341

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RSS has no analytics. that's the big weakness. RSS has been stripped of content even in most other blogs, substituting it for links back to the main sites, which is a workable compromise for webmaster but not one that helps readers. yahoo pipes where a stopgap for a while, until yahoo pulled the plug. I think what's needed is an intrusive format that delivers metrics and tracking. sure it'd be another tool for contro…

RSS is a protocol, not a service. Email doesn't have analytics, nor does html or http or any other protocol. Analytics is functionality you connect to services or tools, generating logs of how you use something. It's not on the same level of abstraction as a protocol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

duh, this is only a technicality, but since you need to be anal about it, I'll have the detail obsessive version so you can follow the discussion too:

"RSS doesn't define support active content, which is what's used on other channel to build in depth analytical tool that go beyond page view. without active content, analytic is in control of the reading software, a big step back from other content delivery protocol. even email could be used to track engagement using unique links for each recipient, but most reader software has an incentive to cache reads and not to forward unique links, letting content provider with the only option of syndicating link and summaries, causing a natural bias for clickbaiting titles, because driving user to the producer is the only way to get back analytical data. this has caused a steep decline in the availability of rss content and viability of rss for consumers."

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All feed readers are centralized, even one you run on your laptop. Care to justify that statement?

Your laptop is not a distributed system. If it is lost or destroyed, you lose your feed reader.

LOL

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#343
post #94

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In regards to your full text request. The publisher has the option what to syndicate, truncated or full. What you are asking them to do is have a crawler go to the site and pull the full text whenever they feel they are being served truncated. Not only does that go against the nature of RSS, but would be costly for them. What app do you pay for that does this? Is it even using RSS?

Quite a few apps provide this. One is called Newsify. I don’t know that it goes against the nature of RSS. I kind of feel that providing only a title of the article and a link goes against the spirit. But nature and spirit are different.

It really depends on how it's done. Some sites, like Wired, tend to give you a short, one or two sentence abstract of the article so you get the general gist. If it piques your interest you can click through for the real meat. I'm okay with this. They have a paywall after you read more than some amount per month, and I believe they have a special subscriber RSS feed with full text. So this solution seems like a good way to both respect my time (by only inducing me to click into stories I want to read) and maintain the value of their subscription.

Other sites, like Slate, are more annoying. They write headlines and opening paragraphs that are "Slate-pitches" that are trying to goad you into clicking. These I have no patience for and eventually unsubscribe from after my fourth or fifth click-through to a thoroughly boring article.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#344
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a few apps provide this. One is called Newsify. I don’t know that it goes against the nature of RSS. I kind of feel that providing only a title of the article and a link goes against the spirit. But nature and spirit are different.

Unfortunately newsify is ios only

Feedly is the only one I've found where I can sync my feed between browsers and my phone. Every other service seems to be stuck in one area or another. It's really quite annoying. I need a feed reader that works on every device that I read things on.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#345
post #143
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a frequent RSS user, I want to read the content in my preferred environment with my preferred contrast, colors and font. Many years ago I decided to not follow people who only put a crippeled version of their content into my RSS reader. If they don't want to be read, that's ok, they're pleanty others with better content anyway which I gladly read instead.

Any chance you know of a good list of full uncrippled rss feeds?

I'm not quite sure what you mean, aren't list of things to read very personal and dependent on the taste and interests of the person?

My website has full feed: https://jeena.net/all.atom and so have blogs like Kottke http://feeds.kottke.org/main Marco Arment https://marco.org/rss Scott Hanslemann http://feeds.hanselman.com/ScottHanselman and most of the personal blogs you can find out there.

But as I said, I most probably didn't quite get the question.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#346

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When was the last time you bought a ThinkPad? This is my third one and suspend works. The Trackpad is great, with three buttons. 24 Gb of RAM, 11+ hour battery life in Linux, and a 4-year at-home next-day repair plan. It was $1,900 including tax, shipping, and support. Macs are much more expensive for worse specs. This computer "just worked" out of the box, and there is full freedom to tinker with the system. I think…

Im actually going to make the order for a new thinkpad today, to run NixOs on. What specs and model do you have? Are there any tips, or something you wish you knew? My config reaches >€2500 quite fast.

[deleted]

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#347

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I got a T460 with i7-6600U CPU @ 2.60GHz. I always research the models online before buying: " ". I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 on it at the moment. The next-day at-home support has been great. They have come to my home and replaced motherboards on the kitchen table with no questions asked. It has two batteries, which added a little weight, but I rarely think about power outlets any more. I can't think of anything else, b…

Neat! This will be my first thinkpad since ~2005. I’ve been eyeing the X1Carbon. What made you select T460? Do you feel that it’s portable enough to bike/walk around with and use in cafes etc? I guess what I’m really wondering is, with all different models (7 different choices in the T series, and then X and P) how can you select one? I’m in analysis paralysis.

I work with a T460 (my employer only works with Lenovo laptops). Oh my God, I'll never buy one for myself. After a year, the battery last like 2 hours and the touchpad is shit. The only cool thing it is the dock. This is my second Lenovo laptop and no again, thanks.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#348
post #103

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I think you can back up OPML to Dropbox, which should provide kind of export facility, since OPML is a generic format.

Feedly does OPML import/export now. It worked for me the other day. I'm just a (non-paying) customer. https://blog.feedly.com/opml/

Ah, didn't know that. Even better, thanks for the pointer!

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#349
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Feed" is pretty common. But you still will only know what it means if you know what it is :)

> you still will only know what it means if you know what it is That's the problem with RSS/Atom. "Feed reader" doesn't mean anything to most people. "Subscribe to this website" does.

Interesting. In the original post, I clicked on the RSS "link" towards the bottom. Firefox invited me to subscribe via "Live Bookmarks," a Firefox browser feature that may pre-date Google Reader. It's a good name for non-technical people, but I don't know how many people have used it. I'm not even sure how it works.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#350

Has anyone launched an RSS reboot? I think RSS could catch on if there was a leading reader that produced a facebook-like wall, social commenting integrated, and some marketing effort behind it.

I was also wondering about that. I'm uninterested in subscribing to individual blogs via RSS — but if a new magic RSS format / technology, could list the blog posts I actually want to read (similar to how Facebook finds interesting FB posts), + notify me about @mentions & comment replies — then yes maybe. Would want some way to connect with other people too, probably (like, add friends).
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