

Ask HN: Better alternative to daily RSS feeds reading? - greyman

Every day a few articles interesting to me are being published on the web. What technology do you use to discover them, while filtering out the rest?<p>I've been using Google Reader for a long time, and while theoretically it should save time by eliminating the need to visit each website individually, I noticed that opposite is sometimes true. The main issues I am struggling with are:<p>- with more feeds added to the reader, the noise is increased<p>- the very act of being subscribed to something can create a feeling of "obligation" to check and "clear" the feed.<p>- the technology fosters the attachment of "checking what's new," in a similar way email does, and that wastes even more time.<p>Of course, all of those issues can be alleviated by proper feeds curating, unsubscribe mercilessly and insist on discipline to not check the feeds too often.<p>Anyway, I feel there is a time to discover/invent some new technology to deliver my daily reading to me, something which would avoid the need to subscribe to sources. Recently, for example, I discovered that when something truly interesting is published, it will usually appear on twitter, and also being retweeted several times. I've been quite successful to use twitter search to discover new stuff for the keywords I am interested about, and the services like Tweetmeme are promising, too. But I didn't found yet some service which I can truly replace Google Reader with. Maybe that's also a good startup idea. What's your experience?
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gorbachev
I really don't have a better alternative as I'm kinda struggling with the same
problem.

Anyway, my interests are kinda broad, so to use "curated feeds" like Hacker
News or basing them on Twitter volume wouldn't really do it for me. Also I
quite enjoy finding unexpected things that I didn't even know I'd be
interested in.

I'm an information junkie, what can I say.

I DO know quite well what I'm NOT interested in though. Very few solutions let
me filter out crap I'm NOT interested in. I think that approach would work the
best for me.

I wish information I read was accurately classified using some standard
metadata conventions. It'd be so much easier to deal with. Obviously with the
sheer volume of data, and the diversity of the sources, that's probably
completely impossible to do in any reasonable way. Still, I wonder, if a
popular RSS platform would implement some sort of standard, and then let their
sources come on board if they wished to...I wonder how quickly it'd be
adopted.

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sokoloff
>I DO know quite well what I'm NOT interested in though. Very few solutions
let me filter out crap I'm NOT interested in.

Yes, you know what you're not interested in. But can you express that in a
machinable fashion? " <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it> "
only helps you after you've already seen it.

Alternately, if you could create the machine to take a human's loose
description of what they're not interested in and filter it out, there are any
number of ways to turn that into big money AND big benefit to society. (In
_very_ loose terms, that's what search engines do...)

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dsims
I moved noisy feeds out of Google Reader and into FriendFeed. I use the
FriendFeed notifier <http://friendfeed.com/about/notifier> to have items popup
on my screen in real-time. If you follow a few key people & feeds on
FriendFeed, all the interesting news should reach you.

It's mostly invasive, and now I don't have to constantly check anything and I
don't feel like I'm missing anything either. If it's important it will
probably popup more than once. In fact, it's how I noticed this post
<http://friendfeed.com/newsyc>

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toddcw
I got so tired of this problem I created my own service:

<http://www.ectofeed.com/>

It takes a bit to set up the filters, but once you do it gets rid of all kinds
of junk. I've experimented with the services that claim to be able to watch
what you read/mark/save and cater your feeds accordingly, and have found them
to be greatly lacking. I just don't think we're there yet in terms of what AI
and similar technologies are capable of.

Anyway, you're welcome to give it a try. Feedback is always appreciated.

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edd
I have been using Shaun Inman's Fever (<http://feedafever.com/>) recently to
try and filter out what is 'hot'. Its an RSS reader but lets you have feeds
that are only used as indications to link up other good posts. It works by
showing you articles that lots of people are linking to.

~~~
thetylerhayes
Fever requires you to create a server from which to run it, pretty shabby for
a service you pay for to not have dedicated servers.

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elcron
I use hacker news. Seriously though, I've been wishing google reader allowed
you to rate what articles you like and to what degree you like them, then have
an algorithm sort them by how much it thinks you would like them. Maybe I
should make that...

EDIT: looks like people mentioned services that do something similar.

~~~
dsims
<http://feedscrub.com> is such a service

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samstokes
Broadersheet is a startup trying to solve this sort of problem. They have an
iPhone app which serves up an electronic newspaper personalised to your
interests. (Sadly they don't yet cater to iPhone denialists like me, so I
can't report from direct experience how good it is.)

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thetylerhayes
Lots of sites listed so far, but not more than one vote for any. Doesn't
inspire much :\

You're certainly not alone; too many of us suffer from this problem. Maybe
it's time for you to invent something?

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truebosko
Why not use something like www.postrank.com? I'm pretty sure that's why it was
made, to solve the problem of reducing all the noise and only showing you the
best content.

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whu
Very helpful, & i'm very appreciative. <http://www.newsbrane.com> suggestion
from DTrejo seems 2 be a winner 4 me.

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chuck_taylor
It doesn't help that many writers and publications use clever and cryptic
headlines that often are the sole way of judging whether an item is worth
clicking or not.

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baroova
Tweetie + Instapaper was my replacement for Google reader. I dont have to mark
tweets as read as well. Lazyfeed is good too.

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DTrejo
You might like <http://www.newsbrane.com>

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jmonegro
<http://www.lazyfeed.com>

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scumola
<http://feedhub.com>

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bokchoi
Sounds like a newspaper!

~~~
greyman
But how would newspaper know what interests me?

~~~
bokchoi
Well, I was implying that the newspaper editors would cull the most
interesting bits of news for you. Or perhaps you could wait for your mom to
clip articles and send them to you in the mail.

