RSS for Mac OS X Roundtable 114
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."
Rephrase? (Score:1, Offtopic)
need i say more?
Re:Rephrase? (Score:3, Funny)
1. posters to slashdot actually possess grammer skills
2. the mods actually care about readability of their news
Re:Rephrase? (Score:5, Funny)
Point for me!
Re:Rephrase? (Score:1)
Not even the mods, but who really expected that anyway?
Re:Rephrase? (Score:1)
Enough? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Enough? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Enough? (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes you say that? That's like saying email will be folded into the browser - sure, there's webmail, or Mozilla Suite, but they're different applications with different purposes. Unless they do something ridiculously clever, I don't see how a browser can offer any more than basic RSS support without becoming bloated.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Enough? (Score:2)
Re:Enough? (Score:2)
The only problem with KNewsTicker is that I'd have to install the entirety of KDE to use it : (
Re:Enough? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Enough? (Score:2)
I was kind of hoping for a Free (and free) version, but this is pretty good too.
Re:Enough? (Score:2)
Re:Enough? (Score:2)
Re:Enough? (Score:2)
Re:Enough? (Score:5, Informative)
First, you might want to checkout the sage extension for Firefox [mozdev.org] 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.
Re:Enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
Careful, some folks could have said the same thing about operating systems. Even before the Microsoft/Linux arrivals.
Re:Enough? (Score:5, Funny)
someonewhois (808065): "It seems like they're tons out there, why do people keep making more?"
The same might be said for
Re:Enough? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Enough? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Enough? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Enough? (Score:4, Funny)
Do I count as an Honorable Ancient One, or at least a Mildly Inoffensive Old Guy?
Re:Enough? (Score:2)
I'm still waiting for... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd also like to see a decent ticker with a reasonable interface. Something not too intrusive that will roll selected headlines across the menubar or somewhere else once in a while, not constantly. I looked at a screensaver that did RSS but it did way too much work and crashed a bunch. I just want to o
Re:I'm still waiting for... (Score:5, Informative)
Try NewsYouCanUse [autostylus.com].
(Sorry for spamming my product, but it does exactly what you're looking for.)
Re:I'm still waiting for... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Enough? (Score:2)
Perhaps to ensure that there is "lots of software available" and "a strong developer base" for the platform for which one wishes to evangelize...?
And no, I didn't get through reading the article, because the "Macs rule, PCs drool" beginning of the interview turned me off entirely. The very premise of the first question was my first clue that annoyances lay ahead. I've never felt that I was facing a dearth of RSS reading/aggregating capabilities on my PC. (FWIW, my current RSS reader is my browser, i.e.,
Re:Enough? (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, Apple is a pretty miniscule marketshare at the moment. While you can fudge things by talking about installed base, going by that installed base still decimates OS X's marketshare numbers. In
Re:Enough? (Score:3, Interesting)
And with Apple getting in the mix with their browser-style Safari RSS,
Re:Enough? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because developers for Mac are doing the same thing as Windows developers.. building dozens of titles that do the same exact thing, hence crushing the argument that "there isn't any software for Mac"
The difference is, in the Windows world there are hundreds of titles for each purpose, 90% of which may be crap. In the Mac universe, you may have only one or two titles for each purpose, but they're usually of very good quality.
Personal web portal (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Personal web portal (Score:5, Informative)
my.yahoo.com
Re:Personal web portal (Score:4, Informative)
You don't need to imagine it anymore. My.Yahoo does exactly this. Allowing you to put RSS feeds on your custom page.
We're looking at doing this exact same thing on our own site.
Re:Personal web portal (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, you can easily find this kind of PHP script [hotscripts.com].
Re:Personal web portal (Score:2)
http://www.wirelesscouch.net/cgi-bin/headlines/he
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Personal web portal (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Personal web portal (Score:2)
I'm not sure either product can split the feeds by category, but I usually just read them all at once; I'm one of the people who swears by the "feed" approach to newsreading. Both products can split out your website by category, though, creating an "everything" main page, and seperate pages for categories which are basicall
Re:Personal web portal (Score:1)
Re:Personal web portal - Use Java Rome (Score:1)
Not meant as a troll but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Apple gets it wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
I think Apple should tied RSS reader with Mail.app, not the browser. What you think about that?
Re:Apple gets it wrong (Score:2, Informative)
i get the latest
Re:Apple gets it wrong (Score:1)
I think it would be silly to tie and RSS reader to a Mail tool.
After all, RSS feeds are from websites and link to articles that are posted on web sites.
Re:Apple gets it wrong (Score:2)
what is the point of RSS? (Score:5, Interesting)
On Demand (Score:5, Informative)
how is that different? (Score:2)
Re:how is that different? (Score:1)
Re:how is that different? (Score:1)
Re:AAGGLL Re:how is that different? (Score:1)
it's hard to even get spam onto an RSS feed in the first place
Re:AAGGLL Re:how is that different? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:On Demand (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:On Demand (Score:3, Informative)
1) Are you sure you're setting the correct HTTP response codes to let users know that content has/has not been updated? This can solve the problem for about 85% of your users, I would imagine.
2) Consider using a 3rd-party feed provider, such as FeedBurner [feedburner.com]. It will even give you most of the statistics you woul
Re:what is the point of RSS? (Score:5, Interesting)
So what is the point of getting updates via email when you can just use live bookmarks from within browser, for example. Plus RSS are really valuable because they can and are integrated within various news feed sites like google news. Thats the strongest point of RSS feeds.
Re:what is the point of RSS? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:what is the point of RSS? (Score:1)
that's the part I don't get (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
but email already allows that (Score:2)
I imagine soon we'll have standardized ways to get comments and post replies in an RSS client, then the client will add killfiles and whatnot, and then we'll have reinvented the discussion group yet again.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the format (Score:3, Informative)
There really is nothing stopping you from writing plugin
Re:what is the point of RSS? (Score:3, Informative)
The other thing it's having going for it is its popularity among web developers. Most web developers could care less about a usenet group and don't want to go to the trouble of a mailing list. Something like HTML on a smaller scale - whether it's good or not doesn't matter, what's important is that it's everywhere, and it's (usually) consistent. More sites with R
Re:what is the point of RSS? (Score:1)
Re:what is the point of RSS? (Score:2)
Which common format would that be?
At last count there were 9 incompatable versions [diveintomark.org] of RSS. And then there's Atom, which itself has a few incompatable versions floating out there in the wild.
And that's not counting the lack of content standards. Should they be full-text or excerpts? Should they include the author, the subject, the category? Should they contain full-size images? Should they contain enclosures? Should they con
Re:what is the point of RSS? (Score:1)
Re:what is the point of RSS? (Score:1, Interesting)
For instance, You can every new SlashDot feed, without rereading the old ones, in a rather concise format, in one page so to speak, expand only those headlines of interest. You could do
Still banging out bugs (Score:5, Insightful)
-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...
Re:Still banging out bugs (Score:2, Redundant)
You could take a look at NewsYouCanUse [autostylus.com] if you want a newsreader with a less clicky and obtrusive interface. One click to open a story, from your menubar.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
URLs for the various rss feeders (Score:2)
NetNewsWire [ranchero.com]
NewsMac [thinkmac.co.uk]
Pulp Fiction [freshlysqu...ftware.com]
Shrook [fondantfancies.com]
Re:URLs for the various rss feeders (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
503 Server Busy (Score:2, Funny)
Must be all those darn RSS users trying to get their slashdot feed on the hour.
Yea but what happens when.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yea but what happens when.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
What? No SlashDock? (Score:4, Interesting)
Where's SlashDock in the list? http://homepage.mac.com/stas/slashdock.html [mac.com]
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.
Yeah, no kidding! (Score:2, Informative)
Not that I'm an RSS fanatic, but I've heard of exactly one of these (NetNewsWire), and everyone I know on OS X uses SlashDock, so this strikes me as uninformed. And not mentioning SlashDock on Slashdot, of all things...
Re:What? No SlashDock? (Score:2)
Podcasts (Score:3, Informative)
use web browser (Score:2, Informative)
Re:use web browser (Score:1)
Re:use web browser (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of people want their feed reader to interact with their desktop environment and other desktop apps.
- Scott
traffic overflow (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Fuck You America (Score:1)