Slashdot Mirror
RSS for Mac OS X Roundtable
Thoro writes "There is an unusual interview with the authors of the five major RSS clients for OS X: NetNewsWire, NewsFire, NewsMac, PulpFiction and Shrook.
Safari RSS, Apple, the hype around RSS and the role of the news aggregator in the future are discussed. It's also hinted that the performance problems of RSS may be overblown.
It is a breath of fresh air to see so many competitors come together to talk civily and not to better gang up on another."
Because you get innovations. Example: I was pleased to see Firefox does "active bookmarks" using RSS, which change bookmarks depending on the content of the site (for example, I see a "RSS for Mac OS X Roundtable" link now). Eventually, most RSS programs are going to get folded into the browser anyway, so it's good to take the important pieces.
Is there a reader that is flexible enough to allow users to make a pseudo web site (ie serving locally) with those aggregating syndicated content?
Imagine the possibility to design/allocate different news on diferent section of a web page, with different links, and everybody will get an instant GoogleNews with fully customised content.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Careful, some folks could have said the same thing about operating systems. Even before the Microsoft/Linux arrivals.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
Ahem...
/. user accounts. ;)
someonewhois (808065): "It seems like they're tons out there, why do people keep making more?"
The same might be said for
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
PC Hardware (teir one) vendors spend weeks with FUD about the other products. (IE Tommy Boy and "But what if the Guarantee Fairy's a crazy glue sniffer? Next thing you know there's change missing from your dresser and your daughter's knocked up. I've seen it a hundred times.")
Windows does the same thing from a development standpoint (DOS isn't done till Lotus won't run) and to some extent the semi-zealotry of the OSS community (to parapharase Mike Myers 'If it's not GPL it's CRAP!' and all the associated 'KDE is l33t gnome is proprietary' type things.
Just my $0.02
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Am I the only one who doesn't get the point of RSS? It seems to be providing periodic updates in a concise format. Can't you do that by setting things up to send items by email every time there's a new item posted? Or even by UseNet to a moderated group? What does RSS do that's new?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
RSS is FOD (feed on demand), so yo don't get what you didn't ask for, and you can easily filter/remove undesired RSS feed.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
That's "grammar".
Point for me!
I'm finding that each RSS reader I see brings a feature or two I'd like, but none of them do everything right.
-Thunderbird does really well, but the keyboadr shortcuts don't drop down to the view window...want to see the next page? Hit space, see the next RSS feed item. (D'oh!)
-Another makes you click the item, then click the preview, when all you really want on some sites is to go from the item to the fill-monty (like Slashdot, for example)
-One updates Every Fifteen Minutes...ensuring you'll never get work done. Finish a pile of Rss feeds, Alt-tab over to your application, and it insistently bounces on the app bar telling you you've got more to read!
It's like all of the RSS programmers didn't have any UI background and have to learn all the useability stuff we figgured out in Web Browsers....and Word Processors, and OS's...
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Where's SlashDock in the list? http://homepage.mac.com/stas/slashdock.html
This is what I use to constantly check SlashDot for new stories. It's probably the best I've seen, is contantly updated and is FREE! (Donations accepted.)
I have no connection other than liking and using SlashDock.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
Those who forget the past are doomed
RSS on the menubar. It's just my preference, I can't justify it with any arguments, but I find it odd that with so many RSS readers out there for OSX I can't find one that puts news in a hierarchical menu.
Try NewsYouCanUse.
(Sorry for spamming my product, but it does exactly what you're looking for.)
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
Eventually, most RSS programs are going to get folded into the browser anyway, so it's good to take the important pieces.
First, you might want to checkout the sage extension for Firefox as opposed to the builtin live bookmarks. It is very nice.
My guess is you are mostly right, the mass consumption of RSS will be a PC browser embedded function. My guess is the hardcore will use other apps, such as feedreader, feeddemon, etc. They are far more refined for the purpose.
I think it will be very intesting how all this shakes out, and what clever ideas people come up with to use RSS (I have seen very innovative ideas already). The beatuy of RSS, is it's flexibility and generic nature, leaving the display to the whims of the users.
Also remember, the applications will go well beyond traditional PCs. I worked on a fairly infamous product (spectacular failure, mostly an idea before it's time that cost too much) called Audrey from 3Com. It was a small Internet Appliance (aimed for the kitchen, family room, etc.) that could browse and check email, but it's really cool feature was programmable "channels" for content, selected by a rotary knob on the front. You would program in what you wanted each channel to be (say Chicago Weather, football news, etc.) for each channel. You can "change the channel" like a TV.
What was behind all this? RSS (or a close cousin, at least, it was early in the game). Had we had all the RSS content there is now, that would have made the feature that much more compelling (we had a hell of a time getting content at the time).
Other, non-PC apps could be customized news on a mobile phone, driving electronic marquees (think Times Square). Yeah, these things are done now, but mostly manually, with limited selection of content. RSS opens up this kind of application to the little guy (think Main Street in East Bumfsck, Iowa), and opens up custom content on mobile phones (rather than the small selection of canned feeds available now).
Anyway, don't restrict the application to traditional PCs, and don't restrict the application to just traditional web content. RSS has potential to do what the web has done on a larger scale, provide access to non-web outlets (phones, etc.) only the big guys could access before.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
It is quite an honor when The Ancient Ones grace us with their presence.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
The idea of RSS is great, but how is different from the late 90's idea of pushing content to the desktop, such as Microsoft's Active Desktop?
:
2 issues posed
1) Automated RSS agents might update too often, thus creating unnecessary network traffic.
2) The user might need to access the absolutely latest headlines, and the RSS agent might be displaying a cached copy. Then when the user access the original site's frontpage, the original intent of RSS is defeated.
I'm a huge fan of RSS (esp My Yahoo portal's implementation), but the problems need to be addressed.