Issue 19: Spotlight on Technology
By Dr. Roger Korby

Through RSS Colored Lenses

Do you find yourself going to the same five or ten websites every day, multiple times a day? Over the last few years the lists of sites I frequent grew to over fifty and keeping up with them was becoming a daunting and not so enjoyable task. I was suffering from information overload and it was really starting to ruin my whole web-surfing experience. I had even started to consider taking some pretty drastic steps, like leaving my computer off all evening at home just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. What I needed was a tool to help manage and deliver all the content of my favorite websites. This is exactly what RSS feeds and feed readers do, and depending on the reader, they can do a really good job.

Any website that gets new content posted regularly and is database driven, (the content is stored in a database instead of just HTML files), probably has an RSS feed. (RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication). An RSS feed is a file that describes the last twenty or so articles or posts, (the number of which is specified by the website creator). The descriptions contain at least the headline or title of the post and either part or all of the contents of the post. A feed reader is an application or website that manages a list of feeds you “subscribe” to and puts the contents of the RSS feed on the screen in a useful way. I prefer the web-based feed readers because you can access your list of feeds, (and what posts you have read or not read) on any computer, instead of just the one that your feed reader application is installed on. With some application feed readers there are ways to sync your read/unread lists between multiple computers, but this seems kind of unnecessary when the web-based feed readers work really well.

On a regular basis your RSS feed reader checks if there is any new content on each website you frequent. If it finds a new post or article, it adds it to your “unread” list. When you log in to your reader, all the unread articles show up in one place. This makes it simple to keep up with a lot of websites. One of the coolest things about feed readers is that you can save up all your reading for a convenient time such as the weekend or evenings. I usually come home from work and sift through all the day’s news and articles in about 30 minutes.

I have used several feed readers over the last year or so. The best one is actually one of the newest ones. Google’s Reader is really easy to use and allows you to quickly skim through headlines (I only actually read about 30% of the articles that get posted each day).

Here’s a screenshot of Google Reader. On the left are some of the feeds I subscribe to with the number of unread items in parenthesis. On the right is the list of unread items. You can add feeds by clicking the Add Subscription link and just typing the URL of the website or blog you want to subscribe to. Google Reader goes out and determines the link to the actual RSS feed file for you.

When you click on an item, it opens, revealing the contents of that post. This article is from one of my favorite blogs, Boing Boing.

The current Google Reader is actually their second attempt at building a feed reader. The first one had some design issues and started feeling really clunky if you were trying to keep up with more than a few feeds. Google’s redesigned Reader is actually just a blatant rip-off of another web-based feed reader, Bloglines. Bloglines was one of the first web-based feed readers and it is pretty good. Google’s new interface is just a little easier to use and I like the way it doesn’t mark items as read until I actually click on them. Bloglines automatically marks all items as read when you click on a feed or group of feeds which can lead to some time-consuming mistakes, (accidentally click the “All Items” link and you’ll have marked everything as read, even if you don’t have time to actually sit down and read all the items.)

Reading the Internet through a feed reader has a few drawbacks. For example, all the articles look exactly the same. All the design and colors of the original site are lost. For me this isn’t a big deal, but YMMV. If you want to read the article on the original site you can do so easily by just clicking the headline link. Also, sometimes an article’s images do not show up in Google Reader.

The other big drawback with feed readers is that you don’t get to see comments left on posts. Some blog engines offer RRS feeds for the comments of each post, but trying to keep up with comment feeds for each post of a blog seems pretty unwieldy to me. If I’m really interested in a certain post, I usually just click through to the original website to see if there are any interesting comments.

While feed readers are probably not for everyone, I think everyone should at least give them a shot. Just subscribe to a few of your favorite websites or blogs, (assuming they have RSS feeds), in Google Reader and see what you think.