6 ms·

Why and how to use RSS for consuming knowledge

56 points by bluprince13 5y ago

rcarmo 5y ago
I read almost everything (news, blogs, even HN) via a combination of Feedly, a custom Node-RED scraper that turns some sites into proper RSS (and translates things like Swedish into English) and Reeder. It’s still the best way to quickly sift through news every morning.
amriksohata 5y ago
Feedly is fantastic for rss
- bluprince13 5y ago
  Yeah, it was b/w Feedly and Inoreader for me. Went for Inoreader kinda randomly. Because I only use it as a backend, it doesn't seem like I need too many features.
PaulKeeble 5y ago
I self host FreshRSS. The grand majority of sites support RSS as well so it works for most things although you may have to apply some filters to content depending on the sites and what the feeds contain. It is a quicker way to get new articles lists from the places you care about to give you a custom feed of the sort of "news" you care about.
bilal4hmed 5y ago
Been using and paying for newsblur for some years now. Absolutely love it
- bluprince13 5y ago
  Anything particular about it that you like. What makes it worth paying for? Just curious.
  - benrapscallion 5y ago
    Another NewsBlur user and fan here. Here are only a few of the reasons I like it: 1. Extracts full text of RSS articles. 2. Is also a Twitter client 3. Ability to read email newsletters 4. Open source and works well with other services 5. Sophisticated iOS app (believes there’s something for android too) 6. Comment on and share articles through its (quasi)network of BlurBlogs. See for example its founder’s blog: https://samuel.newsblur.com/ https://samuel.newsblur.com/ 7. Easily import, export, add RSS/Atom feeds, jsonfeed and OPML. 8. A helpful community: https://forum.newsblur.com/ https://forum.newsblur.com/ And many more:
  - bilal4hmed 5y ago
    @benrapscallion has pretty much mentioned everything. It works and has been working fine for the past 7 years that I have been using it. You can self host but I felt $24 per year for something I use daily is worth it. Its cross platform and has an excellent Android app that I use. Has some nifty AI. text filtering capabilities that help to sort articles. It does both river of news and email inbox style rss display. Fast support as well and fairly active development that you can track on their repo After Google Reader shut down I tried a lot of different services and Newsblur felt to me the most closest and natural successor. Its interface is simple and has been largely unchanged, so helps with muscle memory.
mukundesh 5y ago
For me RSS died with the death of Google Reader
- raspyberr 5y ago
  But RSS is everywhere. I use it for so many blogs and sites, as do many others. And for sites that don't have RSS there are services to turn them into RSS feeds. You can turn newsletters into RSS feeds. You can have RSS in your email client. RSS is thriving.
  - ammar_x 5y ago
    Is there a reliable way to create RSS feeds for sites that don't have them? That would be really great...
    - bluprince13 5y ago
      Try web feeds? E.g. https://www.inoreader.com/blog/2020/04/convert-almost-any-webpage-into-rss-feed-with-inoreaders-web-feeds.html https://www.inoreader.com/blog/2020/04/convert-almost-any-we...
- senectus1 5y ago
  hell no, RSS just shifted sideways to a feedly interface. still going strong though.
- detaro 5y ago
  People keep saying that and I never quite get it. What was so unique about Google Reader? When it should down I imported my subscriptions into another reader and used that ever since, without problems.
  - slightwinder 5y ago
    It wasn't in anyway special or unique. Though, it was a good app and it took competitors several months to years to reach a similar level. But Google Reader dominated the market back then, and them closing it was a kind of signal. It was around that time that other rss-related services went into decline, while competing solutions like social networks and reddit were on their hype-train to popularity. So it's kinda natural that people saw the shutdown of Google Reader as a death-flag for Newsfeeds as a whole. And they are not so wrong on this. The decline continued since then and so far there is nothing in sight to reverse it and start a new hype.
stevekemp 5y ago
I wrote yet another "rss to email" tools, which is what I use for consuming feeds: https://github.com/skx/rss2email/ https://github.com/skx/rss2email/ Getting feeds into email means I have the local content available for searching, and am not tied to desktop/mobile, or a particular machine. (Rewritten in go, primarily because the standard r2e was the last daemon/program on my host that required python. So switching let me drop a whole bunch of dependencies.)
- bluprince13 5y ago
  > I have the local content available for searching That's a good point. Hadn't considered that. Definitely have had moments where I couldn't find an article later with Google.
richieeeee 5y ago
Wow this article has changed my life!
- bluprince13 5y ago
  Ahaha I'm glad you found it useful.
webwanderings 5y ago
https://feedreader.com https://feedreader.com has been working out really well for me for long period of time. It is not as popular as others, and that's a good thing.
darekkay 5y ago
I've created Tip Of The Day [1], an open-source website that provides daily tips from several categories. RSS is the recommended way to consume the content, but people can also use the web version or JSON. [1] https://tips.darekkay.com/ https://tips.darekkay.com/

56 points by bluprince13 5y ago

I read almost everything (news, blogs, even HN) via a combination of Feedly, a custom Node-RED scraper that turns some sites into proper RSS (and translates things like Swedish into English) and Reeder. It’s still the best way to quickly sift through news every morning.

amriksohata 5y ago

Feedly is fantastic for rss

bluprince13 5y ago
Yeah, it was b/w Feedly and Inoreader for me. Went for Inoreader kinda randomly. Because I only use it as a backend, it doesn't seem like I need too many features.

PaulKeeble 5y ago

I self host FreshRSS. The grand majority of sites support RSS as well so it works for most things although you may have to apply some filters to content depending on the sites and what the feeds contain. It is a quicker way to get new articles lists from the places you care about to give you a custom feed of the sort of "news" you care about.

bilal4hmed 5y ago

Been using and paying for newsblur for some years now. Absolutely love it

bluprince13 5y ago
Anything particular about it that you like. What makes it worth paying for? Just curious.
- benrapscallion 5y ago
  Another NewsBlur user and fan here. Here are only a few of the reasons I like it: 1. Extracts full text of RSS articles. 2. Is also a Twitter client 3. Ability to read email newsletters 4. Open source and works well with other services 5. Sophisticated iOS app (believes there’s something for android too) 6. Comment on and share articles through its (quasi)network of BlurBlogs. See for example its founder’s blog: https://samuel.newsblur.com/ https://samuel.newsblur.com/ 7. Easily import, export, add RSS/Atom feeds, jsonfeed and OPML. 8. A helpful community: https://forum.newsblur.com/ https://forum.newsblur.com/ And many more:
- bilal4hmed 5y ago
  @benrapscallion has pretty much mentioned everything. It works and has been working fine for the past 7 years that I have been using it. You can self host but I felt $24 per year for something I use daily is worth it. Its cross platform and has an excellent Android app that I use. Has some nifty AI. text filtering capabilities that help to sort articles. It does both river of news and email inbox style rss display. Fast support as well and fairly active development that you can track on their repo After Google Reader shut down I tried a lot of different services and Newsblur felt to me the most closest and natural successor. Its interface is simple and has been largely unchanged, so helps with muscle memory.

mukundesh 5y ago

For me RSS died with the death of Google Reader

raspyberr 5y ago
But RSS is everywhere. I use it for so many blogs and sites, as do many others. And for sites that don't have RSS there are services to turn them into RSS feeds. You can turn newsletters into RSS feeds. You can have RSS in your email client. RSS is thriving.
- ammar_x 5y ago
  Is there a reliable way to create RSS feeds for sites that don't have them? That would be really great...
  - bluprince13 5y ago
    Try web feeds? E.g. https://www.inoreader.com/blog/2020/04/convert-almost-any-webpage-into-rss-feed-with-inoreaders-web-feeds.html https://www.inoreader.com/blog/2020/04/convert-almost-any-we...
senectus1 5y ago
hell no, RSS just shifted sideways to a feedly interface. still going strong though.
detaro 5y ago
People keep saying that and I never quite get it. What was so unique about Google Reader? When it should down I imported my subscriptions into another reader and used that ever since, without problems.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  It wasn't in anyway special or unique. Though, it was a good app and it took competitors several months to years to reach a similar level. But Google Reader dominated the market back then, and them closing it was a kind of signal. It was around that time that other rss-related services went into decline, while competing solutions like social networks and reddit were on their hype-train to popularity. So it's kinda natural that people saw the shutdown of Google Reader as a death-flag for Newsfeeds as a whole. And they are not so wrong on this. The decline continued since then and so far there is nothing in sight to reverse it and start a new hype.

stevekemp 5y ago

I wrote yet another "rss to email" tools, which is what I use for consuming feeds: https://github.com/skx/rss2email/ https://github.com/skx/rss2email/ Getting feeds into email means I have the local content available for searching, and am not tied to desktop/mobile, or a particular machine. (Rewritten in go, primarily because the standard r2e was the last daemon/program on my host that required python. So switching let me drop a whole bunch of dependencies.)

bluprince13 5y ago
> I have the local content available for searching That's a good point. Hadn't considered that. Definitely have had moments where I couldn't find an article later with Google.

richieeeee 5y ago

Wow this article has changed my life!

bluprince13 5y ago
Ahaha I'm glad you found it useful.

webwanderings 5y ago

https://feedreader.com https://feedreader.com has been working out really well for me for long period of time. It is not as popular as others, and that's a good thing.

darekkay 5y ago

I've created Tip Of The Day [1], an open-source website that provides daily tips from several categories. RSS is the recommended way to consume the content, but people can also use the web version or JSON. [1] https://tips.darekkay.com/ https://tips.darekkay.com/