CT Biz Blogs

Ok, now that you’ve realized that RSS is something you need to know about, it’s time to pick an RSS reader (also called RSS aggregator, or feed reader).

There are pros and cons for every feed reader, so I’ll just give you my opinion about feed readers I’ve tried and point you to some readers to try out.

Web-based

My main issue is that I can be working on different computers throughout the day. I like to be able to read my feeds from any of those. That’s why I use Bloglines, which is a web-based reader.

I also like the fact that I don’t have to hunt through a blog site for the actual link to the RSS, which is sometimes hard to find. I only need to enter the URL of the site and voila! Bloglines also has a button you can add to your browser. When you find a blog you want to subscribe to, all you need to do is click on the button to add it.

The advantage to Bloglines is that it is accessible from any computer that can access the web. However, the flip side of that is that sometimes it loads slowly, depending on the demand on its services at any time. And sometimes, for no particular reason, Bloglines doesn’t update some feeds. For example, for a while CTBizBlogs was showing no new posts even though I knew there were some. That issue got resolved, thank goodness.

I still use it for my feed reader, but I keep an eye on it. “Trust but verify.”

Browser-based

One simple way to keep up with RSS feeds is through Firefox’s Live Bookmarks, but I don’t recommend it. To me, one of the features of RSS is that it gives you or points you to updated content only. Firefox’s Live Bookmarks show you a list of all the enteries. Yes, the most recent entries are there, but so are others that you’ve read already. If you’re bookmarking a blog that’s updated infrequently, you have to remember or guess which entries you’ve read.

Here’s a screen shot of Live Bookmarks in action. Can you guess from this list which entries on Squidoo’s blog I haven’t read? I can’t.

You can also, if you use Firefox as your browser (and you should!) try an extension. Firefox’s extension are handy, free, additions which add a lot of extra functionality to your browser.

Based on Amy Gahran’s RSS tutorial (feedreader section), I finally checked out Sage. And I love it! It’s an easy, elegant way to read feeds. Sage installs easily and lets you find feeds in an intuitive way — just go to any page in your browser and click on the magnifying glass. Sage will list all the feeds on the site for you. No hunting.

If you want to read your feeds, you load Sage into your sidebar. If you don’t, just close the sidebar.

Notice how the unread posts are in bold typeface. Most feed readers work that way.

Here’s a screenshot of Sage in discovery mode. (I put a red rectangle around the magnifying glass).

Email application-based
If you’re an Outlook addict, you can get a feed reader which installs in Outlook and becomes another folder in your inbox. I tried IntraVnews . I liked it for its convenience, but stopped using it because it only made Outlook more bloated and slow than it was to begin with. But it’s free for personal use, and if you use Outlook, you might like it.

I just started using the RSS feature in Thunderbird. Thunderbird is Mozilla’s email application. I can’t get my email to work right in Thunderbird, but I can get the RSS to work. It looks convenient as all heck and easy to use, too. (For the record, I think the email issue is more my ISP’s fault than Thunderbird’s.)

Stand-alone feed readers
I mention this last only because I don’t use this method anymore, although I certainly did before Bloglines.

There are a number of applications you can download which will organize your feeds for you. One of the best is FeedDemon. It was my first reader, and I loved the whole list of blogs that came pre-configured. It allowed me to learn about blogs and see what was out there. (Then I realized that I didn’t want to read most of them, however, so I had to do a lot of deleting. )

All the other readers I mentioned were free — FeedDemon costs $30. But it’s a good, solid desktop reader and worth the price. If you want to save posts you’ve read, or don’t want to be constantly online, then this might be the reader for you. You can download a trial version, to find out.

Here are some links to other articles about feedreaders:

• About.com’s Find the Best RSS Feed Readers / News Aggregators
• Findapp.com’s RSS reader list
• RSS Specification’s list of readers

Now, perhaps you noticed in the graphic of Sage, that the page I was reading was not a blog, but the BBC news. That’s because RSS has gone way beyond the blog — there’s a new world of info out there, just waiting to be pulled into your inbox.

Friday, I’ll talk about how to find stuff to read.

Added 3/27/05:
After reviewing my del.icio.us bookmarks, I rediscovered an excellent demo of how to use FeedDemon to collect RSS feeds, from Alex Barnett. It’s a great way to see a feed reader in action.