What is an RSS feed? What’s the point? One of the problems of the Internet is the sheer volume of information available: news, blogs, opinion columns, comics, hobby Web sites, etc. How do you keep up with all of that? And how do you sift through the boring stuff and find what interests you. RSS feeds are an attempt to solve that problem. Many websites will offer a “feed” that you can automatically receive through a “feed reader” that is either installed on your hard drive or accessed online. Feed readers reach out and grab the feeds published by your favorite Web sites so you can read what you’re interested in all in one program or on one Web page. For most people, feed readers really aren’t necessary. But if you’re like me and you read a lot of stuff on the Web, a feed reader can be a useful tool.
Here are a few Web-based feed readers that I’ve tried out and I like. I actually shy away from some of the most popular feed readers (like Yahoo! or Bloglines), so these readers are less-common or up-and-coming services.
Rojo has a decent interface; I prefer a clean, uncluttered look, but it’s solid and practical. I like Rojo for how fast it is; other online feed readers can lag when you click on different feeds or categories. But the best part about Rojo is the ability to mark articles or posts that you are interested in. This process is called giving it “mojo.” Rojo learns over time what kind of things you are interested in and provides more of those articles. It also allows you to “tag” different posts, so you can build a collection of topics that the reader will provide you with. Rojo is free with registration.
NewsAlloy is a fairly well-known feed reader that a lot of people like. It’s interface is very similar to Gmail, so if you like that look and style you might like NewsAlloy. It can be a little slow sometimes, but I like using NewsAlloy in class. I lose Internet during class, but I can load up my NewsAlloy page and it contains all of the posts in that one page. You can click on the side bar to expand or contract the articles, but you don’t have to link out to the home pages to read the posts. NewsAlloy is free with registration.
Attensa offers feed readers that you can use on your PC, your mobile PC, or online. The downloadable Attensa programs for PC or mobile are supposed to be nice, but they’re not free. The online reader is free if you register. I like Attensa’s clean, minimalistic design the best out of any feed reader. The service is somewhat limited, but that’s okay with me since I just want to read my articles. The down side is that Attensa is new, and sometimes it can be buggy. It won’t load the full article for many of my feeds like some of the other readers do, and it makes me sign in every time I go to the page. [Update: Attensa is now focusing mostly on their PC-based products, which are not free, but he online service still works.]
Never one to miss out on offering a Web-based service, Google also has a reader. It’s now in beta testing, and you log in with your Gmail account. The interface is very different from the other readers, and it’s kinda cool, but for some reason I’m not entirely sold on it. The mechanism to switch between different categories doesn’t seem as convenient to me. Still, if you’re just starting to use RSS feeds, this is a great option to get started.
Findory isn’t exactly a RSS reader, but I included it anyway because it helps you find topics that interest you. You don’t need to register – it remembers you if you’re on your home computer. As you read different news articles or blogs, it remembers what you like and puts more of those types of articles on the page. It seems to learn very quickly what types of things you like, and it allows you to search for different topics. Findory is limited, but it can be useful if you don’t want to register with a service.
