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Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

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Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#113

Like many, I've found myself using RSS less and less over the years, but it's still a handy way to keep up with sites that don't update frequently (whereas TechCrunch, say, is more easily followed on Twitter or e-mail due to the heavy flow). But after trying a ton, I've switched to NewsBlur. Why? It's basically Google Reader done right. So many of the others try to be rather different to Reader or go overboard with '…

I tried NewsBlur. It seems a little bit heavy and over-designed to me. But my main problem with it is that any news items more than 2 weeks old are automatically marked as "read".

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#115
post #85

None. I've stopped using RSS completely. It was an awful time sink.

> It was an awful time sink. That's because you were doing it wrong; you probably subscribed to spammy high-volume feeds. Protip: Don't do that. But if there are some high-volume feeds you absolutely must subscribe to, try only reading the headlines and then marking the entire folder as read.

I did exactly what you describe for years: skimming the headlines of my few high-volume subscriptions and marking everything as read. Even doing that was a waste of time because of those feed's very low signal-to-noise ratio. Besides those few high-volume feeds, I subscribed to dozens of low-volume feeds which all added to the chore/bore.

Skimming and picking my daily feeds usually took close to 2 freaking hours to which I added the time required to read and act upon the very few interesting items (following a couchdb tutorial takes time).

Back in 2007, IIRC, I even started work on my own feed reader (progrss.net, never went live) designed around a cool algorhythm that would filter items according to keyword frequency and manual tagging. It looked good and was an interesting change of direction UX-wise (it was less "app-y" and more "publish-y", whatever that means) but I burned out on RSS in the middle of my project's 3rd iteration.

Seriously, opening my reader (even my own prototype) in the morning and being greated by 1200 or so items was just incredibly tiring. Even with working filters.

Really, following RSS feeds was a colossal time-sink for me and switching back to the old way (consulting a few key sites daily) allowed me to focus a lot more on both my work and my familly.

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When ever I get around to it, that is what I'm going to try. I've heard good things about it. and if it works, I'll never have to worry about switching again.

It is... OK. Works pretty well if you don't have a large number of feeds. If you do, can require some decent hardware to run well. Probably not a big deal for most people here, but I got tired of administering it and switched to NewsBlur. Some of my performance issues could have been MySQL tuning issues, but I just got tired of tinkering with it.

Performance is much better on PostgreSQL than on MySQL, and gets another big boost with absolutely minimal tuning of pg.

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#117

I haven't switched yet. What I would like to have is the reader that is basically the same as the old good Google Reader: - be web based - be cross platform (so I can use it on phone and desktop) - be light on network and fast to load - have simple design - should have folders - sort by oldest - mark all as read (in the folder) - be optimized for text, not pictures and that's pretty much all. What it shouldn't have i…

"Of course, it should be free." Alternatively, "Of course, I should pay a small amount of money so I have to worry considerably less about the possibility of someone pulling the plug on it leaving me in the same situation again." Your mileage might vary but once a service is established as important to me I'm almost keen to pay money to support it.

I agree with you on this, but I said in the comment that one of the alternatives I consider is not using any reader, so it should be pretty obvious that I don't consider out critical enough to warrant even a small payment.

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#118

Like many, I've found myself using RSS less and less over the years, but it's still a handy way to keep up with sites that don't update frequently (whereas TechCrunch, say, is more easily followed on Twitter or e-mail due to the heavy flow). But after trying a ton, I've switched to NewsBlur. Why? It's basically Google Reader done right. So many of the others try to be rather different to Reader or go overboard with '…

I tried NewsBlur. It seems a little bit heavy and over-designed to me. But my main problem with it is that any news items more than 2 weeks old are automatically marked as "read".

Given that the source is available (https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur), I sincerely hope that some kind soul will patch this and let us config the "mark as read" aging function, either by days or ability to just turn it off.

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#119

My personal reader : Leselys https://github.com/socketubs/leselys Demo at : http://leselys.herokuapp.com (demo/demo) So, its "Other" for me.

Also leselys. There are a few areas that still need work, but it does the job and I can run it on my own VPS.
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