newsonaut
Turning inner space into outer space
Monday, June 3, 2013
Moving forward with Feedly
I’m about as sure as I can be that Feedly will replace Reeder as my feed reader of choice.
With the demise of Google Reader, some tough choices have to be made. Reeder has long made a good front end for the Google service, but that service comes to an end on July 1. The app has options to use other feed services such as Feedbin or Fever, but neither of them appeal to me. Feedbin doesn’t allow for sharing with Twitter, Facebook and email. And Fever seems to like a pain to set up on a server.
Both also involve payment, and I’m fine with that. But why pay when there is free service that so far appears to be better.
And that’s where Feedly comes in. You sign up using your Google account and they take care of the rest. Once Google passes on, they promise you will be switched to their own platform — without you noticing the transition.
Feedly will eventually go with a freemium business model, which means you won’t have to pay unless you want more features. Since there are already plenty of good features, this won’t be an issue for anyone but power users.
I’ve been fiddling around with the settings in Feedly, and I’ve got the app just the way I like it. My only beef — and it’s small one — is that it insists on scrolling stories page by page instead of continuously.
Feedly, it looks like you’ve won me over.
Update: A coming version of Reeder will have the option of running off a Feedly account. This is so confusing.
More posts in the Feeds category
Saturday, May 18, 2013
The app you need when news is breaking out
Twitter has gained a reputation for having the latest up-to-datest news, but that’s not always the case. Those tweets have to come from somewhere, and if the sources are not forthcoming you have to wait seconds — even minutes — to read all about it.
A good app for getting through this bottleneck is Breaking News. It’s updated every few seconds with bulletins from an alphabet-soup of reliable sources such as AP, AFP, BBC and NBC. And Reuters.
Just as I started writing this review, I learned from Breaking News that a powerful explosion has rocked Damascus. Not sure what to make of it, since there are precious few details. But for those who feel the need to know, the knowledge is there.
I also learned about deaths from violence in Iraq and Yemen, and about a woman killed by a bus in Florida.
Admittedly, this isn’t news for the faint of heart. I console myself with the belief that my knowledge of these events in no way affects them. Still, unless the latest news is particularly vital, I tend to leave this app on the back burner.
Another problem is that it concentrates on world and U.S. news. A great update would be a way of tweaking it to focus on countries or even cities. That way, if someone gets killed by a bus, there is better chance it will be someone you should know about.
More posts in the Feeds category
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Flipboard ups its game with user-generated magazines
Collect your social web accounts into one place and have them display in a beautiful magazine-style format. The list of sources includes Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube and a bunch more.
You can also add articles from special feeds created by Flipboard editors. Categories include news, business, tech & science, sports and a slew of others. New in version 2.0 is the ability to create your own magazine for other Flipboard users to enjoy.
Give it a name and add articles to it as you find them. I created one called Kamloops (just to see how it works) that you can find by performing a search within Flipboard. Try making your own magazine — you’ll easily best me.
More posts in the Feeds category
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Are Twitter lists a good replacement for RSS feeds?
With the demise of Google Reader, some people have suggested using Twitter lists instead. Indeed there are many news organizations that treat their Twitter account as little more than a feed of headlines and links. But since that comes close to what an RSS feed reader does, I thought I would give it a try.
If you’re interested in setting up Twitter lists yourself, I recommend this article from iMore: How to use Twitter lists to replace Google Reader. And I second their recommendation on Tweetbot.
But what about real life? How practical is it to use Twitter lists instead of RSS feeds and a great app like Reeder to follow them? I set out to try to duplicate my Reeder setup in Twitter, and here’s what I came up with.
First off all finding equivalents, or rough equivalents, wasn’t that hard. In many cases, the publisher of an RSS feed also has a Twitter account. What I found in some cases, though, was that larger news sites often have several specialized RSS feeds but not so many for Twitter. For example, I’m subscribed to the Globe and Mail feed for world news. The Globe has a variety of Twitter accounts covering various subjects, but none just for world news.
I was also surprised to find that a blog that specializes in online journalism has no Twitter account at all. And while you can find an RSS feed for CBC sports, the Twitter account by the same name seems to have been taken by a Popsicle soccer promotion of all things. (Might want to look into that, CBC.)
In any case, I was able to put together half a dozen Twitter lists that more or less approximate what I have set up in Reeder. But what a mess.
The lists are nothing like RSS feeds. They’re a jumble of tweets, retweets and irrelevant items that are constantly streaming — never really giving you the satisfaction of feeling like you’re up to date on everything important. I’m used to this sort of thing with the New Media list I’ve used for a couple of years, but I see that as more an ongoing conversation than a reliable source of news.
Tweetbot is great as a Twitter client, but it can’t beat Reeder’s ability to organize and keep track of headlines. Reeder also goes a step further by showing the first paragraph or two of an article so you can decide whether you want to commit to reading the whole thing. With Twitter, you usually only have a barebones headline to go by.
After trying out Feedly and Twitter lists, I’m more appreciative than ever of the fine workmanship that goes into Reeder. It truly is an excellent tool for keeping on top of the news. Feed readers are incredibly handy and deserve to be more popular. Now that Google Reader is dead and out of the way, I’m hoping some smart developers will find a way make RSS a household word — like Twitter.
More posts in the Feeds category
Sunday, March 17, 2013
A first look at Feedly as a replacement for Google Reader
The death of Google Reader will actually be a good thing, opening the door to innovation in RSS — something we haven’t seen in ages. And it isn’t shutting down until July 1, so there’s plenty of time for those innovations to make themselves known.
Still, that hasn’t stopped at least 500,000 people from quickly jumping to Feedly. And I can see why — this is a great alternative to Google Reader, and its developers promise to stick around and make changes based on users’ suggestions.
I’m hoping my beloved Reeder, which is based on Google Reader, will make good on its declaration that it won’t die along with Google Reader. Even so, I decided to give Feedly a try — just in case.
I’ve mostly been using the iPhone app version along with the extension for Safari, but there are other options — an app for Android, and extensions for Chrome and Firefox.
Feedly app list view
My first impression was that it is attractive, but overdone. Instead of getting a nice list of headlines that can easily be scanned, you get a magazine-style layout with pictures. In the app, you can flip through them at your leisure. With the web browser extension, you get “featured” articles.
Luckily, there are solutions. With the browser, you can change the default view in preferences to what Feedly calls “condensed.” This layout provides the source, the headline and a few words from the article in a single line for each feed. Nicely done.
The app is a little different. You can create a list view, but you have to make the change from magazine view every time you go into a category. There is no way to make it the default. Take care of this and I’ll be happy.
Another beef with the app is limited ability to organize the feeds. You can’t change the order of the categories and you can’t move a feed from one category to another. You can re-order the categories in the browser, but you have to quit the Feedly app and re-open it to make the changes show up there.
My other problem with Feedly is that you have to go to the source website in order to read an entire article. RSS feeds often give you only the first paragraph of a story and you have to take action to read the whole thing. With Feedly, that means flipping to source. With Reeder, you can use the Readability function to get the entire article within the app in a clutter-free layout. If Feedly can’t come up with something similar, it will be a deal breaker.
More posts in the Feeds category
