Translate
-
-
Filter your RSS Feeds to read what YOU want to read
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
In the same vein as Feedblendr comes FeedRinse, basically this service takes your regular old Feed and cleans out things you don’t want. Say you love my blog but you don’t want to read about anything having to do with Wordpress. You just rinse my feed by having Feed Rinse remove all instances of Wordpress. When used in conjunction with Feedblendr you could blend a bunch of tech feeds together and then rinse it so that there is nothing but stories about iPods or Software. All this to make your reading more relevant to you, saving time. Note: FeedRinse is not fully free, even their previously premium features.
Combine RSS Feeds
Ever feel the need to combine some of your most used RSS feeds? Feedblendr can easily blend several RSS feeds into one easy to manage feed. So you could blend together your tech feeds and have them all combined into one feed. This is great when you are in a hurry and don’t feel like hunting around for content. After all you read the same feeds most of the time why not combine them?
The BEST RSS Reader showdown
Those in the know have witnessed my frustration with Google Reader, with hundreds of feeds I have been struggling to burrow through all of that tastey RSS goodness. The problem with Google Reader is that it just doesn’t work the way my mind works. I want to read about certain things, filter by keyword, and scroll through hundreds of feeds like I scroll through email. Google Reader just doesn’t cut it. While its awesome that you can access your feeds anywhere it still doesn’t take the place of a software application that can sort all of that data in real time.
I’ve witnessed Robert Scoble dig through over 600 feeds with Google Reader, even read up on how to better use Google Reader by Adam Pash it just hasn’t helped. However Scoble’s way of determining relevance to go through that many feeds is very applicable, I just don’t necessarily agree with his choice of RSS Reader.
My fellow friends at Blogcatalog turned me onto Bloglines, I used it for a half an hour and felt it better suited but still clunky.
It wasn’t until I found NewsFire that I felt like there was light at the end of the tunnel. I do quite a bit of writing for this blog and others on a PowerBook and its elegance really impressed. The problem is I am a cross platform kind of guy. I needed a RSS reader for my Windows based PC. The search continued, and I learned that NewsGator bought NetNewsWire (thanks Stoneman). I started using their new beta for a while I was still irritated by interface issues. Newsgator seemed to get the feed experience close but adding RSS feeds took too long making Newsgator the online backup at best.
After searching some more through a plethora of software and ajaxy sites I came across RSS Bandit. RSS Bandit is a really powerful tool that seems very natural once you use it. It fit well with my mutiple screen setup. Once I found the RSS that interested me it was only a drag and drop of the RSS icon to pick up the RSS Subscription. The data sorting really impressed me, searching almost like Google Reader should. The most important part of RSS Bandit is the way it displays the RSS Feeds or shall I say the many different options it gives you. You can sort your feeds by folder, keyword, and even author. Almost as simple as email it will allow you to put the latest feeds from everyone on the top of the page so you are always looking at the newest feeds. I was a little concerned with where the search mechanism was located. Your first instinct is to use the search boxes at the top of the screen to filter your RSS feeds but those were web search entry boxes. You do have one button to click to get to search but I can live with that. When inactive RSS Bandit is minimized to the system tray and out of sight where you can schedule updates to your RSS feeds at your leisure. It will notify you of keyword search and updates you specify on the hour if you would like with a help ballon. On the task of keeping all of your RSS feeds accessible from anywhere RSS Bandit allows remote storage (although I have yet to test this feature). It also allows you to change fonts, colors, and styles for just about any status one could think of. It also lets you customize which browser (ie Firefox) you open your links with and can display web pages in its own special browser (probably IE based).
RSS Bandit and NewsFire (on the Mac) just end up being the best weapon to defend against a sea of RSS feeds. Robert Scobes way of determining a RSS feed’s value does seem to make sense so I will adapt to his technique of RSS profiling. All in all I feel I have cured the irritations that Google Reader created. Keep in mind I am a Google fan and want them to come out swinging with a even better version of Google Reader, but for now my RSS static is now clear.
Check it out (NewsWire for Mac)
Check it out (RSS Bandit for PC)
