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Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

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superboyac:
I've been using rss feeds in feedly, on my ipad, on my android, etc...I've used website-watcher for a while.  But eventually I always tire of these tools and go back to using a normal browser.  And I've realized why...it's too much work.  Trying to setup these things to work easily is too much work.  If you use website-watcher, you miss all your firefox addons when reading the websites.  Rss feeds make you click 4-5 times before getting to the actual content...and it's annoying that most feeds are just a title and the real content is only on the actual website (what's the point?).

So here's what I want:
Something like website-watcher that collects all these feeds and prints it to a pdf file every morning for me.  Then I go grab the pdf and just read that.  Automated.  Is anything like this possible?  It's like your own custom newspaper delivered each morning.

rjbull:
In WebSite-Watcher, if you open the properties of a bookmark, one of the tabs is Actions, which allows you to do things like export the page, with or without HTML tags, or run a program against the new version of the page, including highlighted changes if you want them.  Or automatically export the page to Local Website Archive.

superboyac:
In WebSite-Watcher, if you open the properties of a bookmark, one of the tabs is Actions, which allows you to do things like export the page, with or without HTML tags, or run a program against the new version of the page, including highlighted changes if you want them.  Or automatically export the page to Local Website Archive.
-rjbull (February 08, 2012, 02:10 PM)
--- End quote ---
I was looking over those options.  but is there any way to export a bunch of bookmarks to a pdf?  I don't care if things are highlighted or not.  I want something where I come in the morning, open website-watcher, and I can click a button and create a pdf of all the things I want to read today.  It does seem like WW should be able to do that, right?  I just can't figure it out yet.

rjbull:
I agree it should be possible, but I can't see a seamless way to do it either.  I started to ponder semi-automated ways of doing it with external software, but it began to look a lot of effort.  However I haven't updated my copy in nearly three years, so don't know if that area has been improved.

Because your suggestion seems eminently sensible and should be available, I've sent an e-mail to "Aignes" requesting he review this thread.

superboyac:
I agree it should be possible, but I can't see a seamless way to do it either.  I started to ponder semi-automated ways of doing it with external software, but it began to look a lot of effort.  However I haven't updated my copy in nearly three years, so don't know if that area has been improved.

Because your suggestion seems eminently sensible and should be available, I've sent an e-mail to "Aignes" requesting he review this thread.
-rjbull (February 09, 2012, 02:50 PM)
--- End quote ---
Thanks!  I appreciate it.

I think the reason why it's impossible is because of, surprise, copyright.  Just about any big name rss feed is useless...just the article title and 5 word summaries.  Then you have to click to be sent to the original page for the content, where there will invariably be an article split into 7 parts, each with about two paragraphs of content, surrounded by much larger areas of ads and other distractions.

So trying to read one article is like this:
1) click to update articles in your rss reader
2) click on a headline to open up the rss feed for that article
3) which sends you to the rss version of the article, which is pretty much exactly the same as the headline in step #2 (what's the point?)
4) click to take you to the official website for the article
5) click through everything to read the entire article

Now, what makes you think they are going to make it easy for you to collect just the articles that you want and read it through in one shot, without all those clicks?  Not likely at all.  All of those clicks and inefficiencies I listed above is exactly how people are making money now.  Can you make money by making it easy on the reader like I'm describing?  Nope.  You will try, spend a lot of effort, and realize you can't sustain the effort with the money coming in.  So that's why we're where we're at.  Then, if you try to make it better, you will be accused of copyright infringement because you are shortcutting all those ads and clicks.  This is what happens in a market where the only way to make money is by making in harder for the customers to get what they want.

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