RSS readers
For crying out loud, are there no decent RSS readers in the world?
I need a web-based one, because I read feeds both at home and at work; “synchronisation” between two desktop feed readers sounds massively clunky to me, although I’m prepared to be persuaded otherwise.
Google Reader seems to be broken half the time at the moment: I am getting highly sick of seeing “Sorry, an unexpected condition has occurred which is preventing Google Reader from fulfilling the request.” I went from Bloglines to Google Reader because I got sick of seeing (a) the Bloglines Plumber and (b) broken feeds all the time. I’ve tried installing Gregarius and using that, but it never seems to work properly. Anyone have any other suggestions?
Maybe a bit overkill but my mate swears by NetVibes - http://www.netvibes.com/
6 minutes later
Have you tried Newsgator Online? I haven’t, but I’ve heard a few good things. http://www.newsgator.com/
20 minutes later
Netvibes is *the* app that finally got me to buy into RSS, but if ALL you want is feeds, it probably is a bit overkill. http://netvibes.com
If all you want is feeds though, Newshutch just launched recently, and it looks *really* promising, IMO, but from what I could tell from playing with it and Planet Gnome’s feed, they still have some rough edges to smooth out. http://newshutch.com/
30 minutes later
I’m using NewsGator and I’m happy.
30 minutes later
You may want to try out http://www.rojo.com . I also went from bloglines, to google reader and then switched to Rojo. It has some downsides, but you’d better try it out for yourself.
33 minutes later
Since I had *nothing* to do at 2:35a on my side of the pond, I threw up a few screenshots of my Netvibes configurations, including a free culture feed set, and Lugradio playing through the app, though only the Guadec episodes work properly since the other episodes get the 2x speed problem, sadly.
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g294/GreySim/main.png
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g294/GreySim/overview.png
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g294/GreySim/podcast.png
49 minutes later
BTW, what is wrong with Gregarius?
55 minutes later
How About rss2email?
http://rss2email.infogami.com/
I use it to email new articles to my self. If you were to do this to Gmail and set up a filter then you could get it anywhere?
60 minutes later
I’ll third (I think?) Newsgator. It isn’t perfect, it could do with some nice Ajax and maybe a little interface TLC, but I’ve never moved away. It will also sync with a couple of desktop readers if you must.
62 minutes later
Raanan: I can never get it to work properly, and I don’t like the “all on one page” approach it takes anyway. Feeds don’t feed in fast enough, either, because it’s just me fetching rather than one huge process fetching feeds for a massive customer base like a centralised thing has.
82 minutes later
OK. I can’t seem to get a connection to Newshutch — the spinner just spins. (Update: “Application error.
Rails application failed to start properly”. I am becoming increasingly unconvinced by the trandy Rails.) So that’s a no-no.
Netvibes isn’t a reader, as far as I can see; it’s a portal thingy like the Google personal homepage, and I just can’t stand them.
rss2email isn’t really what I’m looking for; mail is for conversations, not for individual separate discrete items like weblog posts.
I don’t seem to be able to even look at Newsgator without signing up for an account, which I don’t like. Is there a demo somewhere or something?
I tried Rojo when I was exploring last time (and eventually settled on Google Reader), but I didn’t like it. Can’t remember why, though, which isn’t very helpful.
I’m going to have to write my own damned reader, aren’t I? I really don’t want to do that; it means I have to fight all the same feed-handling problems that Bloglines are fighting (only semi-successsfully). But I’m too picky, by the look of things.
I can’t help but think that no-one’s actually cracked the best way to read these things yet.
88 minutes later
Netvibes is also my choice RSS reader. It also allows me to subscribe to other types of web services such has box.net, web mail such as Yahoo and Gmail or any pop account.
2 hours later
I couldn’t recommend newsgator more. Especially if you are a Mac user? It synchronises perfectly between every platform I use. The stand alone NetNewsWire which I used at home, the mobile variant for my Treo and also on the Web. It’s one of the more pricey options but worth very penny.
3 hours later
The bloglines plumber hasn’t been making ao many apearances lately, but I’m with you on the broken feeds - I sometimes seem to miss a bunch of entries… feels like it’s being over cautious with validation … what I really want is a web based reader that allows me to store passwords for feeds from restricted sites.
4 hours later
>> For crying out loud, are there no decent RSS readers in the world?
No.
5 hours later
I got fed up with bloglines and their 200 article cap (which seems to fill in minutes on a digg.com feed). I’ve since gone with http://feedonfeeds.com/
Out of the box it was better and since then I’ve hacked the code to my liking. It’s more work than something like bloglines but I also have complete control which I love.
5 hours later
[quote]I’m going to have to write my own damned reader, aren’t I? I really don’t want to do that; it means I have to fight all the same feed-handling problems that Bloglines are fighting (only semi-successsfully). But I’m too picky, by the look of things.[/quote]
feedparser
(http://feedparser.org) will handle it all for you. Its written in Python, too :-)
5 hours later
I use the sage RSS reader plugin for firefox. Check it out. Your feeds are stored in a bookmarks folder, so its really easy to add new feeds from the browser. It also supports custom css styles for viewing the feeds, and all the functionality of the firefox rendering engine.
5 hours later
I’m using gregarius on angel currently, and whilst it is sometimes a little slow, and chokes on the odd odd feed, it works fine for me.
Check out http://www.dellah.com/gregarius/as_days_pass_by/
cut down the items displayed to 25 at most and it is fairly speedy. You can also view each feed individually if you like and use a plugin in to mark as read as you go.
I also have a 2nd firefox window with it open in the background, so fetches stuff as you want (I think I have it every 3 hours) so it behaves to me like bloglines used to. You can also set up a cron job to fetch every so often as well.
6 hours later
I almost left Bloglines myself a month or two back, but they seem to suck much less now, and generally speaking “suck much less” is good enough for me on most counts. I haven’t seen the plumber in a while, most feeds act reasonably, and I vaguely prefer the way articles are presented on it. Their new way of showing podcasts pisses me off, because it can crash my browser with their stupid flash or whatever it is, but otherwise things are okay.
8 hours later
Yeah, I’ve been using Bloglines for a while now and I agree; the plumber shows up much less often. As for broken feeds and 200 item limits - I subscribed to enough feeds that temporary glitches don’t bother me and if I get 200 behind on a feed, I won’t have time for it anyway.
9 hours later
Kinja.
12 hours later
I’ve been trying out the web-based Newshutch as an alternative to Bloglines. They’re still barely 10 days old, but it seems pretty slick with a simple, clean interface and easy OPML imports.
28 hours later
Well, nobody suggested it, but what about planet?
You’ll have to mantain it by yourself and adding feeds requires file editing. You might want to check Sam Ruby’s branch
30 hours later
Newshutch seems to have gotten it’s server situation in line finally, and seems much more stable, but I’m actually seriously hoping you’ll write your own at this point. While I still can’t decide between Newshutch and Netvibes myself, it’s because I can’t decide which one sucks least, and the more choices there are the better. :P
I’m sure you’re already aware of it, but if your custom reader were to be a webapp instead of a desktop app, there’s Rails for Python: http://www.djangoproject.com/
6 days later
I’ve used Bloglines for a while now. I like it because I can use it with just about any browser, including the Blazer browser on my Palm Treo. I rarely see the plumber and never let my count get to 200. If it gets that high, I think it’s time to delete a bunch of entries and start over or maybe delete the feed because you aren’t reading it often enough.
7 days later
I know this post is old now, but thought you may want to have a look at Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader) They’ve recently updated it so it acts (IMO) like a ‘normal desktop RSS reader. I’m very impressed with the new version.
10 weeks later