RSS Viewer?

[jducoeur]

Here's a question for the peanut gallery. I've been developing a habit of skimming a bunch of tech feeds each morning, to keep up with the technology news. The tool I've been using for that is the "Web Clips" Gadget for Google Desktop, but I am gradually coming to the opinion that, to put it politely, that Gadget sucks rocks. The design and concept are reasonably good for my purposes, but it's nowhere near stable enough for regular use. (In particular, it seems to regularly get "stuck", and just stops fetching articles.)

So all right -- let's re-examine assumptions. I'm looking for recommendations of good RSS viewers. What I like about Google Desktop is that it lets me quickly skim the headlines, seeing just the title and source of each article, dive in for the full RSS details (the first paragraph, typically), and then click to go to the article itself. I'd like something with similar characteristics, that lets me quickly skim and then easily dive in. I have no strong opinion between something web based vs. installed (Windows) software.

Opinions? What's good?

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it is good, but I have a fair number of blogs in a friends list on LJ. When I want that stuff, I restrict my list.

[jducoeur]

I've thought about that, but the UI isn't ideal for my purposes -- LJ doesn't lend itself really well to "skimming", at least for me. I'm looking for something that presents a better summary view, and is more oriented towards diving in...

[dsrtao]

I like Google Reader -- http://www.google.com/reader

[jducoeur]

Okay, that's useful to know. Given that I *would* like the Gadget if it were only stable, I'm willing to give a try to another of their devices. Thanks!

[oakleaf-mirror.livejournal.com]

This won't help you much, but I have yet to find an RSS reader I like as much as the one built into Safari (Mac browser).

[jducoeur]

Only useful in that it's another reason to ponder switching to a Mac next time I get a new laptop. But still, interesting to stick in the back of my mind; thanks!

[peregrinning.livejournal.com]

I use, and like, Bloglines (www.bloglines.com). It allows me to skim through the titles and intro paragraphs, and check the boxes of articles I want to save to read later. Then, when I go back to that same feed, all I see is the checked items and whatever new items have arrived.

Your feeds are listed along the left side navigation bar, and you can organize them into folders if you wish.

I believe you can set feeds for title only, or title and description, but I haven't played with that feature.

Going through the "100 most popular Bloglines feeds" gave me links to at least 10 of the resources I use on a daily basis for tracking news, and another 10 that would be quite entertaining if this weren't a work computer. :-)

[jducoeur]

*Very* interesting -- that "only show me unread" feature is one that I've longed for. I'll check it out; thanks!

[doubleplus.livejournal.com]

I've been very pleased with FeedDemon, which does the things you describe. However, the version I really like is 1.5, which I have at work. By the time I downloaded it at home, it had been bought by another company and I don't like their newer version nearly as much.

[jducoeur]

Hmm. Slightly mixed review, but worth knowing about. Thanks!

[umbran.livejournal.com]

I've never used the feature, but apparently Mozilla Thunderbird will handle RSS feeds now.

[jducoeur]

This is true. I haven't paid attention to that, on the assumption that it does so in an email-like way (which doesn't really match my desired usage model), but it's worth taking a look at. Thanks!

Thunderbird

[metageek.livejournal.com]

I just tried it, and it doesn't work very well; it can handle the Engadget feed (which has full HTML enclosures), but not an LJ feed (which has no enclosures, just the headline). When I try to view one of the items from the LJ feed, it tells me it can't find such-and-such a file.

(This is version 1.5.0.10, on Linux.)

[laurion]

I don't want to read the same feeds at home and at work, or I'd use a client like Vienna or RSSOwl. I've tried most of the web based solutions out there, and I have opted to use the gregarius.net package, running off my own host. It has a nice set of plugins, and lets me speed read my feeds, by having it set to only show me unread items and double-click an item to mark it read. I typically go through the feeds quickly, opening anything interesting into new tabs (dear me, I'm addicted to tabs). In this way I can usually get through 100+ items in under 10 minutes, opening the interesting things for when I have time to browse with more care. Gregarius also lets me sort my feeds, group them, adjust settings as to how frequently it updates, etc.

I run everything through there, as I have a custom s2 layout and perl script to channel my LJ friend-feed into RSS, and I use darkgate.net/comic to scrape my webcomics into an RSS feed.

[jducoeur]

Interesting. A bit more work than the other suggestions, but it sounds like your usage is more like mine. I'll look into it -- thanks!

Readers I've tried

[metageek.livejournal.com]

The first RSS reader I used is the Live Bookmarks feature of Firefox: an RSS feed shows up as a folder of bookmarks. Convenient for first-tier things, such as my wife's LJ, which I like to be able to check with one click, and also for things like my "read every day" collection (via del.icio.us, which lets me have an RSS feed of one of my categories); but probably not suitable for you, since it doesn't show full-text enclosures.

I use Google Personal Homepage for a bunch of feeds that I'm willing to skim at work. It works pretty well, and it does show the first N bytes of the full-text.

I also use the RSS reader that came preinstalled on my web tablet (a Nokia 770); that's quite good. It does the "don't show unread" thing (including a "Read Later" checkbox), and displays full text, including images. (Mind you, with high-traffic blogs such as Engadget, the images tend to swamp the 770's rather anemic RAM. An N800 might do better.)