

What RSS reader do you use, and what does it lack? - icebraining

I'm planning on writing an RSS reader, as a learning experience and as a way to improve my user experience.<p>I'm interested in knowing what do you use, and what could be improved.<p>If you don't use one, why not? And what do you use for aggregation of content, if anything?
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p4bl0
Google Reader is the better feed reader I could find in both desktop and web
categories. I like the sharing features, the only thing wrong is that it's not
free software and not hosted on my server. I tried some GReader-like software
but it was not as good, in particular regarding the keyboard-driven aspect.

~~~
AndrewDucker
The best thing, for me, about Google Reader is that I can use it from work or
home without worrying about synching things back and forth. It knows what I've
read, and what I haven't, and I don't need to keep track of anything myself.

~~~
jerico2day
I use feed on feeds: <http://feedonfeeds.com/>

Open source and works wonderfully well. Also, easy to mod. I put in a
Pinboard.in sharing link for all my articles, and you can do the same with
just about any service in a few minutes with PHP.

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hkuo
Reeder. But here's the one feature I'd kill for.

There will always be duplicate links fr different news sources, like Techmeme,
Techcrunch, Hacker News and such pointing to the same article source. All if
want is for those to be grouped together so I don't have to be exposed to the
same article multiple times while scrolling through the feed.

~~~
enness
+1 for dupes. Need to get rid of those. I use Google Reader.

~~~
madhukaraphatak
+1 for dupes.Google reader user here

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nyordanov
I use Google Reader, the keyboard shortcuts are great. I'd like to have native
unread count in the favicon like gmail. Other problem is that the feeds don't
refresh automatically (or better, just appending new content without a
refresh).

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Simple_Panda
Reeder.

It lacks what all RSS feeds seem to lack - a "mark all up to here as read"
feature.

If I have 1000 unread items in a stream and I leaf through 200 of them I want
to right click and article and mark all chronologically preceding articles as
read. Nothing seems to do that.

~~~
theelmer
a) What Simple_Panda said. (100 points) b) Ability to limit items from a feed
to N most recent (e.g. 100 items). Older items should be handled as read. (30
points) c) Ability to limit items from a feed to N most recent days (e.g. 2
days). Older items should be handled as read. (30 points)

I use Google Reader and I like most of its features. It lacks the
aforementioned :)

~~~
jkemp321
I like DailySync (<http://dailysync.com>) on iPhone. It supports b) by
default.

It has a couple of other features that makes it very efficient to keep up with
many feeds

\- mark an individual item as read both in the snapshot view (using a long
press) and detailed view (you can also mark all items as read/unread)

\- "close" feeds that you want to read later; the screen space is used more
efficiently

\- see the count of unread items posted today for all feeds in a group at once
(I find this very useful)

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zzuser
Google Reader on the desktop and Byline on iOS. Google Reader compatibility is
a must in order to keep all devices in sync.

On iOS the following are must have features: * swipe to next article * preload
RSS articles and linked content for offline access and faster browsing of
content

Byline is currently the best RSS reader on iOS, but it has a lot of
shotcomings: * No Next Unread button or gesture (NetNewsWire does, but is
otherwise a horrible, horrible app. Avoid like the plague.) * Slow compared to
Reeder * Only shows last 1000 RSS items * No gestures for navigation like
Reeder * Uses an effing dropdown menu in portrait mode _AND_ does not hold
state for the menu * Some feeds with special characters are not correctly in
folder, but dumped in the All Items folder

I would actually prefer to use Reeder, but Reeder is terrible for actually
reading RSS. Skimming RSS feeds yes, reading actual articles no. Whoever
thought that a pull or push gesture to navigate to the previous/next RSS item
was a good idea should have their head examined.

Somebody really needs to write the perfect RSS reader for iOS by combining the
best features of Byline and Reeder + that missing Next Unread button.

I moved from Bloglines to Google Reader due to Bloglines inability to keep
state, unavailability and lack of development. Generally Google Reader has
been ok, but I originally preferred Bloglines and moved over only when it was
obvious I had to due to the demise of Bloglines.

Google Reader's web interface is OKish on the desktop, but absolutely horrible
on any mobile device, hence the need for a native iOS app.

~~~
icebraining
Unfortunately I'm still on a s60 phone, so a mobile reader for the new
smartphones is not on the table at the moment.

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cmer
Stopped using an RSS reader a long time ago because I just couldn't keep up
with all the content. Too many unreads, too much noise, got sick of it and
figured I'd get the good stuff through Twitter or HN if it was really
important.

If you're building an RSS reader, I suggest you build one that filters out all
the garbage and only shows me what I should _really_ read. I honestly don't
think we need "yet another RSS reader". Having some sort of algo to rank the
content could be a good way to differentiate yourself.

~~~
rcfox
There was a Waterloo-based company called AideRSS that did just this. Then,
they became Postrank. Postrank was recently bought by Google, so perhaps they
will add some kind of smart filtering to Google Reader.

~~~
SashaO
The PostRank is integrated into Google Reader as a (sort of) filtering plugin
for Chrome/Safari. Here is the link: <http://labs.postrank.com/gr>

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mike-cardwell
RSS2Email with a Sieve filter to move the messages into their own folder. I
use various IMAP clients to read my feeds, including Thunderbird on my laptop,
Mutt on my Linux box, Roundcube when I need Webmail and K-9 on my phone.

The only problem with it is RSS2Email sometimes sends duplicate messages for
some reason. It also doesn't offer the capability to filter messages out of
the feed. If I need to do anything like that I just bounce through Yahoo
Pipes.

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DomainNoob
I use Google Reader and am very happy with it. Especially the ability to tag
an item into an output feed. I love using the 'Note in Reader' bookmarklet to
collect snippets into a tag (which can be output as RSS). Have a look at
FeedAFever.com as well. If I could tag and share in Fever I'd probably be
using that. Will you make your reader Open? If you want to brainstorm I've
been thinking about this a lot. Feel free to email me.

~~~
icebraining
Yes, it'll definitively be open, probably AGPL. Thanks for the suggestions,
I'll look into FeedAFever and will email you when I have something set up for
discussion.

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ddw
Google Reader. Obviously easily integrates with the rest of the Google
services, the emailing and sharing of articles couldn't be easier. I'm not
sure if anything could ever make me change.

I ported my Instapaper articles as a RSS feed, so if I want to read something
later I'll do that through GReader. So if you could find a way to take out
that step, although it isn't really a big deal.

Also on my phone I've accidentally hit "mark all as read" a few times, which
is really frustrating when I've lost hundreds of items that I wanted to read.
There's way to undo that, which is depressing.

Frankly I'm a little surprised that not everyone on here is using a RSS
reader. It just seems like such an efficient way to get new content. So much
of what I read now comes through it instead of typing in nytimes.com or
something or using a bookmark, especially since I find myself on a lot of
different computers.

I really hope RSS feeds never go away as they are so essential to me. But it's
a thing that never really seemed to catch on with the non-geek public, even
though it so obviously makes sense for everyone to use.

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stdbrouw
Probably not something you'll commonly hear, but: an easy way to program
against an API and add widgets/plugins. Within newsrooms, where RSS readers
get used professionally, it's frustrating having to work within the
limitations of Google Reader and its unpublished API, yet on the other hand
it's just not worth the engineering effort to create a reader from scratch
since it's not a business-critical app.

~~~
icebraining
An API will definitively be on my feature list, but I didn't know they were
used in professional circles. Do you have any examples of such use cases?

~~~
stdbrouw
Just personal ones, like using webhooks to filter feed items according to
their content (like you can do with Yahoo! Pipes), inlining the content from
links in twitter feeds, or grabbing all starred content to display in a front-
end "curation" widget. There's tons of cool stuff you could do, really.

Don't overthink what I meant with professional use, though, mainly it's just
people using a reader with 10 times the feeds a regular user would have, and
perhaps sharing their account with other people to go through unread content
more quickly.

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theguvernor
NetNewsWire (Mac) is what I use. I've tried quite a few and really like it. I
don't think it's lacking much.

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tariqk
Google Reader. Mostly because it's available on any machine I can login to my
Google account, so I don't have to worry about synchronising my feeds on
multiple machines.

What could be improved? Well, access to protected, private feeds that require
authentication would be good. The problem is, of course, that the workarounds
for Google Reader to access private feeds
([http://lifehacker.com/5432277/access-password+protected-
feed...](http://lifehacker.com/5432277/access-password+protected-feeds-with-
google-reader) and [http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/subscribe-to-
authen...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/subscribe-to-
authenticated-feeds-in.html)) kind of worry me.

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WalterSear
Google reader. \- Integration with my other resource gathering (ie -
bookmarks) and starred item management \- a way to automatically categorize
duplicate stories so I only read about a particular piece of news once, even
if every blogger on the web is writing about it.

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Nick_C
I use claws-mail for email and it comes with an RSS plugin.

It's very useful because the RSS feeds are treated like email. You can mark
individual items as read, important, tagged, and so on. As well, you can use
the email client's normal search features to search for text in the content. I
use this feature a lot to categorise interesting topics.

The plugin (and claws) are open-source written in C++ if you are looking for
ideas.

BTW, I use it to read HN. HN's RSS feed only offers topics that have been
voted up (I think), so I see only worthwhile topics. Helps sorting the wheat
from the chaff.

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andymoe
None. I can't be bothered to follow 100+ websites anymore - if there is
something interesting on the Internet someone will submit it here, post it to
twitter or I will find it while trying to solve a specific problem. I read a
free daily newspaper at the coffee shop for all the local news I can stand in
a sitting.

However if I did decide to start using an rss reader again I would look for a
native desktop app that did the whole river of news thing well and had some
kind of notification system.

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velenux
I'm using FastLadder (fastladder.com / source code on .org) for one reason: it
is not Google.

Since I was not completely satisfied by it, I recently coded a simple RSS
reader in Rails. It's really bare-bone and requires a lot of polishing, but it
works.

Now it requires some love for implementing many of the ideas presented in this
thread (duplicates, tagging & bayesian categorization, proper bookmarking,
presenting only fresh news), but I don't have much time for it :(

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raywu
Google Reader or Reeder on iPad.

The only reason why I don't use Google Reader on iOS via browser is because it
doesn't support sharing and emailing articles well.

One downside of Reeder app on iPad is the inability to access starred posts
and shared contents to look back at articles.

Instapaper is actually a pretty good alternative on iOS. I like its UI.

Also tried Early Edition when it got much hype but quickly retired it. Too
clunky and doesn't mesh content well.

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neilbowers
Reeder (www.reederapp.com), having tried many and stopped reading any RSS
feeds for a good while because I got too frustrated with them all. It's a
front-end to Google Reader, which I really didn't enjoy using.

Main thing I'd like is the smarts to filter out stories which are essentially
the same, but perhaps not exactly the same.

Oh, and if I bookmark/star something, then next time the same story comes up,
highlight that I've already seen it, or even suppress it.

~~~
taki
Yes please!! This is the feature I always find myself wanting. (Using
Akregator / Kontact in KDE.) So many stories are duplicated at various stories
that the ability to hide all but one where the target URL is the same would
save lots of time.

~~~
kareemamin
Hey Taki, I've wanted that feature too and we built that into our social news
site called The Shared Web (www.thesharedweb.com). The content is pulled from
Twitter or posted by other people on the site and aggregated by URL. We'll be
looking into pulling directly from sources so you can follow RSS feeds too
soon. Would love to know if it works for you.

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wanderr
Thunderbird for feeds I want to see updates from eventually but don't care
when, each feed goes into a separate folder and I just check them when I have
time. Biggest problem is when something changes in the feed format or
something, and it re-downloads all messages.

Livejournal for feeds I'd like to see the day they are updated. Biggest
complaint is sometimes it's super laggy and won't update for a few days, then
spam feed with all updates.

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__Joker
I use google reader. One feature I would like is filtered feeds. ( something
on the lines of yahoo pipes. Unfortunately the feeds from yahoo pipes do not
update frequently enough and lot of items are missed. ). In essence if I want
all the hacker news items which are only related to erlang, I wlll set up a
filtered feed ( title or summary contains erlang ) and I will only get erlang
items for that feed.

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locopati
Here's the killer app that I haven't seen yet (though I haven't exactly looked
too hard) - defining reader agents that can tag items as 'Important' or 'Look
at me first' based on specified keywords or regexps. There's such a flood of
information that it'd be nice to have a way to be notified easily of things
that fall into whatever your current interests are.

~~~
icebraining
I'm thinking about implementing filters, like on GMail. A good number of
suggestions here can be solved by making everything a tag and letting filters
tag and untag depending on the item's content, origin or date.

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giveaboneadog
I use NetNewswire 3.2.15, and have always come back to it after having used
Reeder, and every other RSS reader out to test. It's better than the others,
but i do miss the option to show only feeds that have unread items in the feed
pane. I have also tried Google Reader, but prefer dedicated app. High contrast
is preferred.

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nigham
I think the biggest problem in RSS is not so much the readers but the slowly
declining discoverability of RSS.

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gulbrandr
I use Netvibes for more than 6 years now (since beta). I like it because I can
see many feeds on the same page.

Mobile: <http://wap.netvibes.com/> ipad: <http://ipad.netvibes.com/>

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JamieEi
FeedDemon Pro w/ Google Reader as the backend.

Missing features: \- Mothball feeds I'm not reading lately but might want to
pick back up in the future. \- Topical aggregation of feeds/posts. \- De-
duping.

Not sure if I'd pay extra or switch readers for any of those features,
however.

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tobylane
The only rss reader I've ever used is the one in Opera, and I don't use it at
all currently. I don't see anything missing, but I rarely even had a second
feed. I prefer reading the site itself, or finding the best pages and reading
them weeks apart.

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Tomasthanes
Google Reader.

It lacks the ability to block multiple instances of the same article (from the
same or different feeds).

It lacks the ability to to block by pattern (I really don't care about
articles about Justin or Selena).

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scottw
Safari on OS X. (Apparently I have no use for features and am content to just
see headlines and click the interesting ones). Mainly I want to run as few
apps as possible, and this fits the paradigm best for me.

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propesh
I use FeedDemon. It has a feature called "Watches", which allows me to save
terms I want to search. I have a deals Feed, and watch for whatever I want to
buy. This feature is lacking in Google Reader.

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csulok
i use google reader, because it's fast to use and efficient with my bandwidth.

the "stream view" is good because the next 20 item in the stream is always
loaded (images, videos, etc).

i subscribe to ~300 feeds and updating 300 feeds every 5 minutes would be
quite painful on my slow dsl connection.

i don't like that there's no logic in it that would hide stuff i'm not
interested it, kinda like a trainable priority inbox. but i couldn't imagine a
convenient way for me to set that up anyway...

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davidedicillo
I either use Google Reader or Reeder (on iPad, iPhone and OSX)

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mikefriesen
I use Google Reader, one feature that I would love to see expanded on Google
Reader is tagging / organizing items which is pretty poor.

~~~
rexf
I also use Google Reader and want to be able to organize/expand the Star
function. That is, I'd like to separate what I star (aka Save for Later) into
different types of content.

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hvass
OMEA Reader for me. Never liked Google reader.

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msh
Google reader, its avaiable anywhere and got a better mobile interface than
the competition.

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dobata
switching between Google Reader with Helvetireader and Google Reader in
Fluidapp for everyday use, Reeder for Mac is beautiful, but slow compared to
them. Reeder is awesomesauce for iPhone though and Pulse deserves a mention

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gbeeson
Google Reader for me for all of the other reasons already listed.

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mcclanahoochie
Google Reader + FeedSpeak => My news on the go!

