The creator of Instapaper doesn't see the value-add of using an RSS reader to skim the postings of a high-volume site, for readability/usability reasons?
That's a curious blind-spot.
The power of the RSS reader
21–30 of 84 posts
Re: The power of the RSS reader
#22Personally, I have different labels. I have a high volume label that I nuke with impunity, then another label with low volume feeds that I treat more like Marco describes in tfa. This lets me keep up with all of those low volume feeds, but also skim the daily news when I have time. I also prune my feeds pretty aggressively. This is probably a much fiddlier setup than most people will want, but really so is any RSS re…
Yep. I read about 10% of Techdirt and Android Police but those 10% are usually things I'm really interested in so deleting them is not an option. So I usually just skip the headlines and open up whatever sounds interesting.
Re: The power of the RSS reader
#23Personally, I have different labels. I have a high volume label that I nuke with impunity, then another label with low volume feeds that I treat more like Marco describes in tfa. This lets me keep up with all of those low volume feeds, but also skim the daily news when I have time. I also prune my feeds pretty aggressively. This is probably a much fiddlier setup than most people will want, but really so is any RSS re…
Yeah he lost me when he started saying that I'm doing it wrong just because I subscribe to high-volume feeds.. Years ago I came across someone's excellent strategy for organizing Google Reader under two top-level groups: * Must Read * Can Miss Under those 2 labels I have other classifications, but those are the two main groups that all my feeds fall under. The low-volume or high-importance feeds go into "Must Read" a…
Yep, pretty much this for me too.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/1528/imageiq.png
I read all the things in the "Interesting" label, they get one new item once every few days at most.
In the mass news section, I keep up to date with the first site but all others I only check up infrequently (hence they regularly get to 1000+ and I don't mind, that's normal).
And the Occasional label is kinda in between, but in reality I don't really read anything there anymore.
Re: The power of the RSS reader
#24This exactly matches my use case for RSS. High volume daily websites - like HN - I read directly. I went through a phase where I tried to read HN via RSS (in Google Reader) and for me it wasn't better than just hitting HN directly. But for the kind of sites Marco mentions (which I read most of, actually) that update on a semi-daily or weekly basis, RSS readers are perfect because I don't want to go and visit those pa…
I go back & forth with HN, the reason being that I often star items that I'll want to follow-up on later.
For instance, if I read something at home that I want to share with the crew at work, I'll star it. Likewise, if I come across something at work that really doesn't apply to my job, but it's still interesting, I'll star it so I won't forget to read it at home.
Granted, those functions are not part & parcel to RSS readers, but it's one way that a reader can be extended to offer value beyond the normal RSS featureset. Much like the "note in Reader" feature, which I also used multiple times a day...
Re: The power of the RSS reader
#25I use to mess with rss and agree with Marco on the purpose of them. Then I found a better solution, just subscribe to some of the awesome curated newsletters out there that do all this for you. HN has one - http://hackernewsletter.com and Peter Cooper's tech focused ones ( https://cooperpress.com/ ) keep you in the loop in a particular stack, plus a lot of others that I've seen. Now I don't have to check anything the…
How do the newsletter curators find interesting long-tail links?
Re: The power of the RSS reader
#26I never got into RSS readers, but I use Hacker News and Reddit for the purposes Marco is describing. I have Pulse on my phone set up to follow a handful of RSS feeds (Hacker News, The Verge, Daring Fireball, Ars Technica, etc.) so I have an easy way to see what's happening if I have a couple minutes to kill throughout my day.
I think Pulse could be tagged as an RSS reader, though not having used it I can't say for sure. But if it lets you setup feeds to follow...
Re: The power of the RSS reader
#27Exactly!
Also the fact that rss enables this kind high quality, narrow domain, low volumes posting makes the web way better.
I don't want to read professional writers who have to write their quota whether there is good material to write about or not on that day. They too often focus on gossip and sensationalism. Although I might be entertained briefly, in the end I will not have gained much from reading this type of articles and it's a waste of my time.
I want to read the authors who mostly spends their time doing things in their domain of expertise and get out of their lab/office/cave once in a while to write a post on something they feel is interesting and worth sharing. Because they are not frequent writers the prose might be dryer but the facts, ideas and insights are usually much better than what you get from those who's main job is writing.
I love insights that comes directly from an expert's keyboard. They are pearls of wisdom and it would be sad to lose them because of a decline in support for RSS.
Re: The power of the RSS reader
#28I was very confused to see that I posted this article.
Hacking might be difficult if you confuse dashes with underscores.
Re: The power of the RSS reader
#29Personally, I have different labels. I have a high volume label that I nuke with impunity, then another label with low volume feeds that I treat more like Marco describes in tfa. This lets me keep up with all of those low volume feeds, but also skim the daily news when I have time. I also prune my feeds pretty aggressively. This is probably a much fiddlier setup than most people will want, but really so is any RSS re…
That's how I used to use Reader. One "Important" folder for stuff that I was very likely to read, and another for skimming. It's a common complaint about Twitter that once you start following a few people who produce high volumes of crap, it becomes useless. The usual advice is to be quick to unfollow, but I've always missed a "must read" feature for Twitter, to specially mark those few people where you really do wan…
I like the "volume dial" on G+ Circles. Just wish it would let me filter circle posts by media type (i.e. block all images and videos, but show all text and link posts). I'm sure it can be done, as they just implemented this feature for Google+ searches.
Re: The power of the RSS reader
#30[deleted]