RSS

[sfcgeorge]

A few months ago I got into RSS for the first time really as I started to find twitter overwhelming. I used to follow blogs on Twitter but many will re-post the same article multiple times for reach which is annoying, and seeing news mixed in with what friends are saying became jarring. So, RSS to the rescue!

I think the key to RSS is a good RSS reader and service. I went with the open source macOS RSS reader NetNewsWire and chose to subscribe to Feedbin for sync to NetNewsWire iOS as well.

One bonus of using Feedbin is it has "actions" you can configure, so I've set up several to mark posts read when certain keywords are in a post. AKA a mute filter.

Another benefit of RSS is many larger blogs offer separate feeds of their different sections. So I may only subscribe to a blog's technology section and not have to sift through the rest.

So now I have a slower paced curated feed of blogs I like :)

 

[Adam]

Ah I've been doing it all wrong! NetNewsWire + Feedbin looks like an awesome combination. Feedly did leave me a little bit wanting. I love how Feedbin has the secret newsletter email, do you know if they can be pulled in to NNW as well?

We do have RSS here also but it needs a little tidy-up to be properly useful. I have been meaning to look in to it. Just need to slap /index.rss on to the end of any forum category: https://webwide.io/forums/announcements/index.rss

 

[sfcgeorge]

At the bottom of this post RE magic email feed it says since it’s just a regular feed, it will sync with your favorite native app as well. Haven't tried it yet but I do subscribe to a few email newsletters so I might try it!

NNW is free so you can test that without worries. And Feedbin has a 1 week trial you could test too. That said if you like Feedly the NNW iOS app already supports Feedly sync as well, and the Mac app will be getting it soon.

 

[Adam]

I find Feedly a little clunky. Excited to give your set-up a go!

 

[Evan]

Back in 2011 or so I was a big RSS fan. Google Reader was my main reader and loved it. It was my go-to dashboard throughout the day.

Then of course Google killed it, like they always do. A few alternatives came to my attention, such as Old Reader. Digg of all websites made their own and it was actually quite good, very similar to Google Reader. I also used Netvibes for a while, but after Google Reader was killed off I lost interest in RSS mostly.

When COVID started overtaking all my usual news outlets I went back to curating a list of RSS feeds for stuff I was actually interested in. While I don't visit it as frequently as I did back in the day, I still check in on it every once in a while to see if there's anything cool:

My Feeds

Public page from Evan - Netvibes

www.netvibes.com

 

[Gummibeer]

I'm never a user of RSS but a dev. So I add RSS feeds to projects/pages - or even right now create a proprietary tool to generate RSS feeds by link. But I never had any feed this interesting to my to want to get notified of every post.
RSS and/or atom are definitely great tools! Only JSON feeds are cooler but have nearly no support in end-user world tools.

 

[avena]

Yeah, It amazed me how many sites still use RSS, which is pretty cool. Fragments.pro it's pretty much based on RSS (and when there is no feed, I just scrape them).

I was an avid RSS user back in the old days when Google Reader existed.

 

[Adam]

Just found out you can even use YouTube channel URLs as feed URLs, loaded my YT subscriptions in now too!

 

[sfcgeorge]

Yeah it’s awesome how widespread RSS is, even if it isn’t “popular” anymore. Helps that it’s super easy to implement.

Interesting point about notifications, I don’t have any notifications, I like to dip in when I choose but not constantly be checking it like Twitter it getting alerts like email.

 

[Adam]

Yeah it’s awesome how widespread RSS is, even if it isn’t “popular” anymore. Helps that it’s super easy to implement.

Interesting point about notifications, I don’t have any notifications, I like to dip in when I choose but not constantly be checking it like Twitter it getting alerts like email.

Yeah I'm the same with notifications, the idea of RSS for me is that I don't have the urgency or feel compelled to 'keep up' with other social media so all notifications and badges are off.

If I don't read something it will still be unread when I go back to it. There is no pressure! Much more relaxed. A similar feeling I get with this style of forum really.

 

[sfcgeorge]

@Adam I can confirm the FeedBin magic email feature works and shows up in NetNewsWire as a separate feed per newsletter, perfect. I found the newsletters I have subscriptions to also have RSS feeds anyway though. I found the RSS version updates quicker than the email version (not a FeedBin issue, it took a few hours to hit my email inbox too). So I'm sticking with the RSS version but good to know email is an option for newsletters which don't support RSS.

Also thought I'd mention starred articles sync as well. Not sure if that's an RSS standard or not (I don't think so?) but it works with this combo.

 

[Gummibeer]

Also thought I'd mention starred articles sync as well. Not sure if that's an RSS standard or not (I don't think so?) but it works with this combo.

RSS has only a server side feed without interaction options. So it's not part of RSS standard.