19 December 2010
RSS Feeds Live with Reeder!
I am a news addict. I admit it...politics, technology, current events...I love reading about what is going on in the world. And I want it from multiple perspectives which means in this age of biased reporting...multiple news sources. To keep on-top of the information, I am a big user of RSS feeds. What is an RSS feed? Geek alert ahead...skip next paragraph if you want.
According to Wikipedia, "RSS (most commonly expanded as Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator", which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed's URI or by clicking an RSS icon in a web browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds. RSS allows users to avoid manually inspecting all of the websites they are interested in, and instead subscribe to websites such that all new content is pushed onto their browsers when it becomes available."
Geekiness aside, it is a way to have changes from website come to you in a reader rather than you going to various websites. I had been using NetNewsWire on my Mac and iPhone combined with Google Reader to provide syncing. But no longer!
I have moved to a new package on both platforms, Reeder. You can find Reeder for iOS in the App store as a released product and Reeder for Mac in beta, here. Previously, it was unbearable to scan my RSS feeds on my iPhone and now I can make quick work of them on the road. When I am at my mac, it is easy and quick to review the feeds, read the interesting articles and send it off to various sites, like Twitter or Instapaper, or email the link.
I suggest that you check out Reeder if you are a heavy RSS user.
