The RSS Weblog

Retiring the RSS blog

Brad Hill — 2006-07-17T11:27:00+00:00

As of now, the RSS blog joins our list of retired and archived blogs. I recommend checking out Download Squad, our software and computer blog that covers many aspects of the on-screen lifestyle and user experience.

speaking of RSS, remember that many of our blogs (including Download Squad) off RSS feeds by category.

Thanks for reading!

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eBay expands RSS feeds to searches

Todd Carter — 2006-03-28T15:47:00+00:00

eBay has recently added RSS feeds to its search results, allowing users to track their favorite auction items in their news readers. Given that most RSS readers only check for new feeds every half hour, listings in the feeds won't have an end time less than 15 minutes from the time the feed is retrieved. eBay also said the RSS feeds won't initially support all search parameters available through advanced search pages.

The new RSS feed is part of an effort to make more of eBay accessible via the technology. Last November, the auction site began its foray into the RSS world with feeds for the announcement board, discussion boards and listings from specific eBay Stores. Arturo Zacarias, eBay's senior product manager for new technologies, said that the company will add RSS feeds to other areas of the site "in the coming months."

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Windows Live improves RSS reading; New Onfolio-based toolbar due today

Todd Carter — 2006-03-08T12:22:00+00:00

Microsoft's Windows Live has just improved its RSS feed reading feature and supposedly now lets you import your OPML files. But the biggest news is that a new toolbar is due out this afternoon that incorporates many of the features of Onfolio, a desktop research organizer and RSS reader that Microsoft announced it acquired yesterday. Onfolio is no longer for sale and won't be supported in the future, with the acquired company now focusing all its efforts on improving and supporting the new toolbar only.

It's unclear whether the new toolbar will keep any of Onfolio's desktop RSS functions. We'll have to wait and see this afternoon, when the new toolbar is released for download. It appears you can download it from the Onfolio site. I'm curious to see what functions are delegated to the Web and which ones are left for the desktop application. (By the way, if you purchased the basic or professional versions of Onfolio after Dec. 8, you can request a refund. Purchasers of the academic version are out of luck because a half-dozen or so of its features are not available in the toolbar.)

On Windows Live, RSS reading is very cool. You can click on a feed and go to the original site to the read a story -- or you can hover over a "[more]" link and see much of the feed's content and graphics. You can scroll through a story if it doesn't fit into the pop-up window. This is how Google should have programmed its RSS reader, which, in my mind, sucks. (I do, however, like Google's personalized front page, where I do much of my RSS reading.)

The RSS modules on Windows Live show a continuous stream of graphics for each feed group. If you click on one of the graphics, a full page containing that module's feeds appear, displaying a portion of that feed's post. You can choose to "collapse all" or "expand all" feeds. Unless you're interested in reading each feed's entire post, expanding all feeds is a quick way to browse through a blog's postings. If you want to read the actual post on the blog, you can click on "more."

As for OPML files, I could not find a way to import RSS feeds. I filled out a support ticket, so we'll see how long it takes to get an answer. I suspect I'll discover how to do it by this afternoon, either from information released with the new toolbar or from one of the readers of this blog. :)

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iPod software now lets you read more RSS items

Todd Carter — 2006-02-23T10:35:00+00:00

A favorite shareware program of mine that adds all kinds of information to your iPod has raised the number of RSS feed items it can handle. Pod2Go, which has been a Mac product for a while, but just recently introduced a Windows beta as well, now lets you view 100 items or articles per RSS feed that are converted into iPod notes for later reading while on a plane or anywhere else. Essentially, you can turn your iPod into a PDA. Previously, you could only view up to 30 news items per feed.

The software comes with more than 1,000 built-in feeds to choose from. You also can add your own RSS or Atom feedst. If you're running NetNewsWire on your Mac, Pod2Go automatically lets you select which feeds you want to include from that program. It does the same thing with Safari's RSS feeds. However, the software doesn't support RSS feeds that require authorization.

But the software doesn't stop there. It also provides information about the weather, movies, stocks, lyrics, horoscopes (if you believe in those silly things), driving directions and gas prices. The Mac version also lets you sync with address book contacts, iCal calendars and other items. It also has a backup feature and a launcher so you can start any program when Pod2Go syncs. There's a 15-day free trial. After that, the software costs $15. Right now, the Windows version is free until the beta ends.

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Converting Safari RSS feeds into exportable OPML file

Todd Carter — 2006-02-10T13:01:00+00:00

At first, saving and reading your RSS feeds from Safari may have seemed appealing. But that may have changed. After all, there are a good five or six solid RSS readers for the Mac that can do the job better. Well, there seems to be a way to move those RSS feeds out of Safari and into the reader of your choice.

By using an XML stylesheet and running it in the Mac terminal, you can convert the RSS feeds into an OPML file. Nearly all RSS readers -- both desktop and online -- will let you import feeds via OPML. Here's how you do it:

Download the XML stylesheet from here. Then run it in the terminal with these commands:
$ cd ~/Library/Safari
$ plutil -convert xml1 Bookmarks.plist
$ xsltproc SafariFeeds2OPML.xslt Bookmarks.plist > SafariFeeds.opml
$ plutil -convert binary1 Bookmarks.plist

Now you have an OPML file called SafariFeeds.opml. Download a news reader or use an online one and import the file. Now you can enjoy those RSS feeds in a more comfortable reading environment.

Via Mac OS X Hints.

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FeedLounge is Ajaxian answer to desktop RSS readers

Todd Carter — 2006-01-28T15:09:00+00:00

I plopped down five bucks this week to try the beta of FeedLounge, an elegantly designed online alternative to such storied desktop RSS readers as FeedDemon and NetNewsWire. In fact, it's hard to tell the difference, at first glance, between FeedLounge and an offline reader like FeedDemon. (The three screenshots show the same feed using different views.)

Of course, the main problem for FeedLounge's developers is convincing folks that they need to pay $5 a month for what Bloglines and NewsGator are already providing on the Internet for mostly free (NewsGator does have some paid versions of its service). Still, it's an impressive feat and it was worth the Lincoln to see what Ajaxian technologies can do for the RSS-reading community.

My first task was inputting a list of about 900 feeds via an OPML import. Rather than handling it all it once, FeedLounge provides a notice that it will incorporate the feeds in batches until they're all there. This apparently keeps their servers from dogging everytime someone like myself comes along with a gigantic OPML file.

I can't tell if all my 900 feeds are in the system. And I'm not going to count them to find out. :) But it looks like they are, and they even maintained the folder structure I brought over with me when I exported the RSS feed list from FeedDemon. Still, FeedLounge isn't without its growing pains: the servers were down for four hours yesterday "due to the database server becoming non-responsive to write operations." Like any Web-based app, you're taking a crap shoot on whether the servers will be up when you need to access the service. And in this case, you're paying moola to use the service.

I felt the purveyors were a little grouchy with me on two occasions, but I can understand that with a new start-up that has has taken 12-hour days to complete. The first was my fault: I had a payment bounce back in PayPal and so I went in and paid them $5 for the first month. They returned my money and told me they could only accept money through their automated system. Fair enough, on hindsight. But it was a waste of my time to do this. The second issue was that I sent them a support request directly to their e-mail address and they didn't care for that, pointing me to the support forums. But he did answer some of my questions in the e-mail reply.

I haven't had a chance to try out the service enough on a daily basis to make an informed decision on whether it's better than other options. But I did find one extremely irritating action that the owners don't seem interested in changing. Whenever a RSS feed is malformed, a warning appears on each and every feed: "Invalid Feed! This item is from an invalid feed. You may want to contact the owner of the feed to let them know." This is extremely irritating and I haven't seen it elsewhere, except occasionally on FeedDemon when a RSS feed is poorly written that it can't be read.

Overall, I'd say it's worth the $5 to try the service for a month and see if it's for you. They also have a trial, but it's limited to 50 people at a time and may be hard to use. I think that FeedLounge is a good example of what we can expect from Web-based applications that closely imitate -- and possibly improve upon -- their desktop cousins. Still, I won't be uninstalling my FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and other RSS readers (yes, I have a lot) anytime soon.

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Poll shows our readers track dozens, hundreds of RSS feeds

Todd Carter — 2006-01-28T14:27:00+00:00

The results of our poll on how many RSS feeds you follow are in and they suggest that most people read more than 100 feeds. A total of 40 percent follow up to 100 feeds, while 8 percent read 120 to 129 feeds and 7 percent read 210 to 229 feeds. The largest group by far, comprising 12 percent of votes, reads 390 or more feeds! (There were more than 159 potential voters,but we had a technical problem that prevented many readers from voting in the poll. You can read about many of their RSS habits in the comments section of the original post.)

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BloxOr Web-based RSS Reader Emulates Desktop

Brad Hill — 2006-01-17T11:56:00+00:00

This is sweet. BloxOr is a Web-based RSS aggregator whose Ajaxy underpinning makes it very much like a desktop newsreader. Three viewing panes reveal the user's list of feeds, the list of items within any single feed, and the content of the feed item. This arrangement, standard on many desktop programs, eliminates the two-pane system common in Web aggregators which requires a click to see the feed item's content. BloxOr works beautifully, and registration requires only a username and password; no email address.

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WordPress 2

Brad Hill — 2006-01-03T10:26:00+00:00

After rumors met silence from the WordPress.org site, an official announcement has finally been posted: WordPress 2.0 has been released. I haven't yet tested it (though I trust WordPress, I wouldn't dare upgrade before backing up my databases and WP folders), but I haven't seen (substantial) reports of migration problems. WordPress 2 is named "Duke," and documented upgrades include a WYSIWYG entry-writing interface (it's about time!) and inline image uploading (it's asbout time!). There is also some kind of Ajaxy-sounding drag-and-drop of interface elements. WordPress has done amazingly well to date, thanks largely to its (relative) ease of installation and operationsl quickness--both selling points when compared to Movable Type, in particular. The program's geekiness, while appealing to many users, probably holds it back from more widespread use. The new WP2 features make it sound ready to rock in a bigger arena. Here is the announcement and download page.

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RSS mashup: Amazon, eBay, Yahoo! product results

Brad Hill — 2006-01-02T15:28:00+00:00

A new RSS mashup site acts as a meta search engine reaching into Amazon, Google, eBay, Yahoo!, Flickr, YouTube, and Technorati. You cannot mash all the search results into one feed, but you can merge Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo! Shopping into a single product feed, which is damn convenient. The site is weak on design, but it works. Used to be called Longtail, but (according to a posted explanation) that term has been trademarked by its popularizer, Chris Anderson. The mashup site is now called BaeBo, and is operated by Fancis Shanahan. (BaeBo is the language spoken in the Solomon islands ... perhaps it has other meanings, too.)

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Poll: How many RSS feeds do you track?

Todd Carter — 2005-12-28T15:12:00+00:00

We're curious to know how many RSS feeds you have loaded into your RSS feeder of choice. If it's in the hundreds, we doubt you read them all every day, but that's for another poll. For now, let us know the number of feeds you track in total by selecting the poll choice that includes your total. We'll print the results in another week or so.

Take our poll.

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Feed Aggregation Made Easy by Google Reader API

Brad Hill — 2005-12-28T10:26:00+00:00

Niall Kennedy has documented an API for Google Reader, beating Google to a public release of how developers can build their own feed-reading applications atop Google's engine. An update to Niall's original post reveals that the product manager of Google Reader confirmed the accuracy of Niall's work, and asserted that Google built the API first, then contstructed Google Reader as just one example of what could be done. The implication here is that Google might well develop new feed-reading applications--something to look forward to. Further, Google plans to release an official API before long, opening the doors to third-party applications.

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Microsoft to use Firefox's RSS logo

Todd Carter — 2005-12-23T10:49:00+00:00

There's probably never been so much fanfare over a tiny orange icon. But the icon Firefox browsers use to indicate that RSS feeds are available on a Web site is being adopted by Microsoft for its Internet Explorer 7 and, likely, Windows Vista operating system. Then the news came that Microsoft would use the Firefox icon in Office 12 -- particularly in Outlook.

Personally, I prefer the RSS icon that says "RSS" or, when I'm feeling really geeky, the one that reads "XML." But the Redmond, Wash., giant and Mozilla officials met and agreed that the Firefox icon is more user friendly, especially for folks who have no idea what RSS is.

In related news, a designer has created a Web site for the new logo. You can download the icon in a variety of sizes.

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Ads in RSS: Obnoxious Works

Brad Hill — 2005-12-16T22:45:26+00:00

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for ads in RSS, and have said so for months. I have intuitively felt that inconspicuous ads would probably work best, if only because they would piss off readers less than big, loud ads. However, a study from Pheedo indicates the reverse is true, and it's two layers of bad news. First, ads run as separate RSS feed items are far more successful (generating about eight times the clickthroughs) as ads embedded in RSS items. Then, it turns out that blitzing the feed with ads in every other item is the most successful tactic of all. Of course, you might lose most of your readers, but the remaining ones will be clicking your ads.

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'Twas the Week Before Xmas, and All Through the Network...

Brad Hill — 2005-12-16T22:05:19+00:00

This weekend it's going to be quiet as a library in here. We're doing some maintenance-big, important stuff that I'd tell you about except then I'd have to be killed, and besides, I don't undertand it in the slightest. Posting in this blog will be light to nonexistent, and the comment sections will be entirely broken. Save up your rants and raves 'til Monday morning. Thanks!

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Bloglines, NetNewsWire most popular RSS readers

Todd Carter — 2005-12-15T13:59:32+00:00

After 10 days of collecting votes, we have some results in our Dec. 5 poll that asked you what RSS readers you use. Bloglines was the winner, with 187 votes, followed by NetNewsWire with 163 votes. It's interesting to see the number of readers who are Mac users. FeedDemon, considered tne best RSS readers for Windows by some, only received 34 votes. Readers could vote for multiple selections.

Yahoo received 89 votes, followed by Google's 51 votes. "Other software reader" garnered 94 votes, with 41 votes going to "other online reader." Seven voters said they don't read RSS feeds. Combining Bloglines, Newsgator, Yahoo, Google and "other online reader" indicates that a large chunk of our readership get their RSS-feed information online rather than from software applications.

It suggests to me that they are getting their news, but perhaps are missing some of the extra features found in software apps. But this could be good news for the new Web 2.0 online readers slowly surfacing. They may be able to attract more people than the desktop software developers can, shaking up this growing niche of the software industry.

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Yahoo! Partners with Six Apart to Distribute Movable Type

Brad Hill — 2005-12-12T13:33:37+00:00

Yahoo! has agreed to provide Movable Type as the default blogging solution in its extensive small-business suite of services. The other hand will get washed as parent company Six Apart directs small-business traffic to Yahoo! for a complete ISP/merchant/blogging package. There's nothing new about Web-hosting accounts with Movable Type pre-installed; the Movable Type site has a recommendation page for such services, to which Yahoo! has not been added.

When I first glanced at the e-mail press release about this announcement, I expected to read that Yahoo! had acquired Six Apart-that would be an appropriate complement to Google's ownership of Blogger.com. Of course, Yahoo! provides a newbie-friendly blogging experience with Yahoo! 360, which could possibly be interpreted as competition to the much more established (and feature-rich) Blogger. But Six Apart's three platform levels (Movable Type, TypePad, and Live Journal) cover all the bases and could vault Yahoo! into a whole new position in the blogging wars.

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Protopage: Ajax-Driven Personal Pages

Brad Hill — 2005-12-07T20:46:16+00:00

Ajaxy personal pages with newsreaders are gaining traction and usability. Protopage is a free service that is astonishing easy to use and doesn't even require registration. (If you create a page and wish to make it persist at an easy-to-remember URL, you must register. But it's still free.) Floating information panels can be dragged around the screen, and there are three basic types: RSS reader; sticky note; and link panel. As far as I can tell there is no way to add a photo to a page, which is a shame. Protopage also provides a default search panel with keyword boxes for Google, Yahoo!, Dictionary.com, and Wikipedia.

Overall a simple product, but the RSS panel does allow OPML uploads, and you can fashion more than one panel for extra sorting power. All colors and backgrounds are customizable with sliders and drop-down menus. You can add pages to your Protopage space, and make those pages public or private individually. A mechanism for inviting friends is furnished, but there's no integrated social action here. You share you page by giving someone the URL, and, of course, friends can build link panels with each other's addresses.

Perhaps the funnest application of Protopage would be to share a password, and get a group together to build a space. Protopage would be an entertaining environment in which to assemble news, links, and notes. Conversations could transpire on the sticky notes. More widgets are needed to bring this thing to life, though. Give it a calendar and photo uploading, and Protopage would start to rock.

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Poll: Which RSS reader do you use?

Todd Carter — 2005-12-05T13:39:00+00:00

We'd like to hear which RSS readers you use to read RSS and Atom feeds. So we're running a poll that asks that very question. Please select all the readers that you use on a daily basis. If your reader isn't specifically in the list, feel free to tell us about it in the comments (along with an URL, if possible, so others can check it out).

Which RSS reader do you use?
	Bloglines
	Newsgator
	FeedDemon
	NetNewsWire
	Yahoo
	Google
	Other software reader
	Other online reader
	I don't read RSS feeds.

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Yahoo! Mail Beta Adds RSS

Brad Hill — 2005-11-30T12:04:56+00:00

Yahoo! again demonstrates its facility with RSS by adding feeds to the beta Mail which is still in restricted distribution. (Original review of it here.) Yahoo! Mail takes advantage of the Outlook-styled interface to create an intuitive RSS package. It's preloaded with selected feeds, and, remarkably, that selection appears personalized. I'm waiting for confimration of this, but it seems that the preset feeds are taken from profile information and personal-interest choices in Yahoo! 360. Naturally, that information wouldn't be available for every user in a wide rollout of the new Yahoo! Mail, but millions of people have Yahoo! IDs that contain a bit of profiling, so perhaps Yahoo! plans to mine every bit if personalizable information it can get. I'm all for it. This level of integration makes for a satisfying experience from the first click.

Of course, you can add feeds. Yahoo! provides a recommended list of about 25 feeds, asnd users can specify an RSS address. NOTE: Users should be able to paste in a Web-page address also, and the feed reader should have the smarts to find the feed; Yahoo! has started a tradition of RSS invisiblity in My Yahoo!, and it should be carried over into Mail.

Somewhat oddly, Yahoo! presents the feed in a three-pane view: feed list on the left, feed items in the middle ... and nothing in the right-hand vertical pane. I expected the source page for the feed item to appear in that pane, and was disappointed to see Yahoo! opening a new browser window to display that page. that system works best on some monitors and resolutions, granted. I'd like to have a view choice. Put the source page in the same window as the feed item, and you're really starting to emulate a desktop newsreader. Since Yahoo! mail (beta) emulates a desktop mail program, this would make sense.

Good start! Excellent start. Yahoo! is going to have one rowdy, boat-rocking launch when the new Mail emerges from beta.

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