Author Topic: RSS Reader? (Read 472,310 times)

rjbull · « **Reply #25 on:** July 02, 2007, 01:23 PM »

Thanks, f0dder... even the PricelessWare site only mentions Opera and Thunderbird.

Perry Mowbray · « **Reply #26 on:** July 02, 2007, 02:41 PM »

Before I reInstalled Windows I was using Great News which did everything I needed to my liking, and I'll probably reInstall it when I get around to it...

tabletguy · « **Reply #27 on:** July 03, 2007, 03:17 AM »

I tried about 6 or 7 different readers for some clients. I settled on RssOwl, and I'm running the 2.0 (beta 6) version, which is written as an RCP app using Eclipse. They're supposed to be adding newsreader support into the product too, but I haven't tried that part of it.

rjbull · « **Reply #28 on:** July 03, 2007, 09:52 AM »

I've just seen a recommendation for Bloglines, which is an online system. Has anyone tried it?

Perry Mowbray · « **Reply #29 on:** July 06, 2007, 11:23 AM »

Quote from: rjbull on July 03, 2007, 09:52 AM

I've just seen a recommendation for Bloglines, which is an online system. Has anyone tried it?

Hey, it looks like a nice mix of features, I'm keen to hear some feed back as well.

At work I've been using Daily Rotation for my lunchtime reading, which I've found to be simple and effective.

laughinglizard · « **Reply #30 on:** July 09, 2007, 01:23 AM »

After having gone through several online RSS readers, I find I've been adding everything to my Yahoo Start Page. Its a little like PageFlakes. I also use Google Reader with a few scripts that make it more pleasant to work with.

Some of the other online readers I thought were pretty good are:

Blog Bridge
http://www.blogbridge.com/

News Alloy:
http://www.newsalloy.com/

and Awasu:
http://www.awasu.com/
(a newsreader on steroids)

alxwz · « **Reply #31 on:** July 09, 2007, 09:12 PM »

BlogBridge (Java, cross-platform) and Awasu (Windows) are desktop apps, although they have some sync capabilities over the web.
News Alloy, from what I've seen, seems to be on the brink of bankruptcy or at least a permanent shutdown (yet they claim to have found a "potential" new investor).

I'm probably about to settle for Google Reader. Strong points for Google Reader are (1) the "river of news" display and (2) that it works with every browser I've thrown at it so far (IE, Safari/Shiira/WebKit, Camino/K-Meleon/Gecko, even Opera). What could be improved: It would be nice if this Google (!) offering had search. And they could add some more Gmail-esque sorting and filtering/rules options (like starring or tagging by keywords).
I don't care too much for tags per se and the bunch of keyboard commands. Many people regard these as huge positives.

laughinglizard, could you please explain which scripts you use? Might be useful for others as well.

Another option I'm considering is buying into the NewsGator family with FeedDemon (Windows), NetNewsWire (Mac) and NewsGator Online for keeping everything in sync. But I really dislike their subscription model (seems you need a paid online account to activate any desktop component you "bought" from them) and NewsGator Online is s-l-o-w.

If it weren't for a usable online reader component, I would look into BlogBridge to keep several machines in sync. The desktop is free and they offer several plans to sync machines via the web, including a free one (limited to 300 feeds and 2 syncs/day, AFAIK). Never tried it, though.

I also tried GreatNews for their claimed ability to sync with Bloglines. But that seems to be one-way only. As a standalone app, GreatNews isn't too bad. Unfortunately, I couldn't find out how to enlarge the font for list view which looked tiny to me. Oh, and most desktop apps seem to work with IE as their internal browser. Don't like that.

laughinglizard · « **Reply #32 on:** July 13, 2007, 03:19 AM »

Quote

laughinglizard, could you please explain which scripts you use? Might be useful for others as well.

Sure.
I don't use all of them, I'm passing along the ones I know about in case anyone finds them useful.

I use two Greasemonkey Scripts, one is Jasper's Google Reader subscribe http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/2571 and the other is Cleaning up Google's Left Nav http://userstyles.org/styles/1959 (its at userstyles but its available as a greasemonkey script there).

The rest are listed and reviewed and Lifehacker, so I'll give links.

The only one I use is Better GReader, though there are some other great scripts that include search and integrate Reader with GMail.

Better GReader: http://tinyurl.com/2z8lsd

Google Reader Notifier: http://tinyurl.com/yptk87

Google Reader Custom Search: http://tinyurl.com/285hx4 (greasemonkey script)

Integrate Google Reader with Gmail via Greasemonkey http://tinyurl.com/2gt2bu

Hack Attack: Getting good with Google Reader http://tinyurl.com/38cuf4
This is a good post on keyboard shortcuts, tweaks, and downloads.

I've used tinyurl links because the links at Lifehacker are long, if you have any trouble with them let me know.

Google Reader is a good reader, but these make it a lot easier to live with. Especially the ability to change skins and clean up the left nav bar.

alxwz · « **Reply #33 on:** July 14, 2007, 12:06 AM »

laughinglizard, thanks a lot.

I will need some spare time to try all those (and how I can integrate them into my most-used browsers).

Meanwhile, I came across a site which seems to cover some of these scripts (among other stuff) as well:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-reader-tools-tips/

laughinglizard · « **Reply #34 on:** July 14, 2007, 01:23 AM »

Quote

Meanwhile, I came across a site which seems to cover some of these scripts (among other stuff) as well:
http://www.makeuseof.com/...google-reader-tools-tips/

Oh, thanks alxwz, that's a good site. I snagged Colourful List View, I like colours to sort.

The Mac OS X theme is nice and clean. If you use Firefox you'll need to add the Stylish extension.

rjbull · « **Reply #35 on:** August 12, 2007, 04:57 PM »

Um... please can anyone tell me what the difference between using Website Watcher and an RSS reader is?

I mean, aren't blog posts and news sites Web pages anyway, so you can see the differences with Website Watcher? What extra does an RSS reader give you?

f0dder · « **Reply #36 on:** August 13, 2007, 08:42 AM »

WSW has a very simplistic RSS reader, and at least for me it always skips things like inline images etc. Main difference is probably things like default stylesheets used, and how comfortable the UI is.

I personally use WSW for my RSS feeds, but that's only because I haven't found any feed reader I like

aignes · « **Reply #37 on:** August 13, 2007, 09:00 AM »

Quote

WSW has a very simplistic RSS reader, and at least for me it always skips things like inline images etc.

This can be configured in the bookmark properties (Advanced + Images).

Dirhael · « **Reply #38 on:** August 13, 2007, 09:45 AM »

Lately, I've become quite fond of Snarfer. I has a small memory footprint, newspaper view & a comfortable interface. It's all good

sri · « **Reply #39 on:** August 13, 2007, 01:15 PM »

Quote from: Dirhael on August 13, 2007, 09:45 AM

Lately, I've become quite fond of Snarfer. I has a small memory footprint, newspaper view & a comfortable interface. It's all good

Did you try FeedReader? I like FeedReader since it's also light-weight + it's portable.

Dirhael · « **Reply #40 on:** August 13, 2007, 02:13 PM »

Quote from: sri on August 13, 2007, 01:15 PM

Quote from: Dirhael on August 13, 2007, 09:45 AM
Lately, I've become quite fond of Snarfer. I has a small memory footprint, newspaper view & a comfortable interface. It's all good

Did you try FeedReader? I like FeedReader since it's also light-weight + it's portable.

Yes I did. FeedReader is nice, but it uses more memory (on my system at least), feels a lot slower and it also had problems when I tried to add certain feeds. I like it (especially the news bar feature), but I don't feel that it's ready to take on the job as my primary reader. Not that I'm perfectly sure that Snarfer is either though...

sri · « **Reply #41 on:** August 13, 2007, 02:18 PM »

I installed Snarfer and concluded that it's not for me.

It doesn't have

1) Portability
2) Ability to star important/useful feeds for later reference.

Hope I am wrong.

Dirhael · « **Reply #42 on:** August 13, 2007, 02:27 PM »

Quote from: sri on August 13, 2007, 02:18 PM

I installed Snarfer and concluded that it's not for me.

It doesn't have

1) Portability
2) Ability to star important/useful feeds for later reference.

Hope I am wrong.

You're not wrong, it does lack those features and more. For me, it's not a problem though so I'm happy with it.

rjbull · « **Reply #43 on:** August 13, 2007, 02:47 PM »

Quote from: f0dder on August 13, 2007, 08:42 AM

WSW has a very simplistic RSS reader, and at least for me it always skips things like inline images etc. Main difference is probably things like default stylesheets used, and how comfortable the UI is.

I personally use WSW for my RSS feeds, but that's only because I haven't found any feed reader I like

Thanks... I just tried RSSMate and FeedReader, but couldn't get either to do anything at work because they couldn't or wouldn't use IE's proxy settings, despite FeedReader having a configuration option for that. GreatNews does work, though, so I'm trying it for a while.

Edit: it appears to be portable. Don't think it can star feeds, but I could be wrong.

sri · « **Reply #44 on:** August 13, 2007, 03:07 PM »

rjbull:

I use FeedReader at work and the proxy server and port that I specify in it work just fine.

Tick 'Use proxy server' and try manually entering the Address and Port.

adarkstar · « **Reply #45 on:** August 13, 2007, 08:42 PM »

This has always worked well for my needs.
http://www.rssbandit.org/ow.asp?RssBandit

rjbull · « **Reply #46 on:** August 14, 2007, 09:20 AM »

Quote from: sri on August 13, 2007, 03:07 PM

I use FeedReader at work and the proxy server and port that I specify in it work just fine.

Tick 'Use proxy server' and try manually entering the Address and Port.

sri,

The corporate system doesn't list an Address and Port as such, but uses a proxy.pac file. Firefox has an "Automatic proxy configuration URL" radio button which, when ticked, picked up that file correctly. WebSite-Watcher and GreatNews both have a configuration setting to use IE's proxy setting, and they both work fine. I was expecting FeedReader to do the same, but it didn't seem to. However, maybe I'll try again. I did save a copy of the proxy.pac file, but I don't understand how to interpret it. It looks like it's designed to offer a variety of hosts and domains as necessary.

laughinglizard · « **Reply #47 on:** August 23, 2007, 08:45 PM »

I've been using NewsGator for about a month now.

http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NewsGatorOnline/Default.aspx

I like the layout, its easy to add feeds, it has a portable version and most of the usual RSS features.

cmpm · « **Reply #48 on:** August 23, 2007, 09:49 PM »

aaww thanks for bringing this one up, laughinglizard
i'm actually just now getting interested in readers and what they can do for me

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #49 on:** August 24, 2007, 12:35 AM »

I like Newsgator - not that I use it a huge amount.

You can also use Newsgator to collect podcasts and automatically install them in a music player library (well you can with WMP, I haven't tried any others).