RSS Continued

Are you ready for more yet? I need to clarify one thing:

You can only subscript to an RSS feed if the web page has an RSS feed.

Okay, that's a bit zen. What's I'm trying to day is that, just because you have a web page doesn't mean you're supporting RSS. You have to setup an RSS feed for your web page yourself. With blogger.com this is very easy, all blog's on blogger.com support a competing standard called ATOM*. If you pump your ATOM feed through feedburn.com you're done.

For everyone else, some assembly is required. I'll leave you to figure out what as it varies depending on what you're doing and how you're hosted.

What's the best Aggrigator Program?

Now there's a question, and not easily answered. It really depends on what you like. Do you like Linux, OS X or Windows? There's not a substantial difference between them, they're all shades of grey in the end. This is no different as a topic.

What I do however believe is that I've not found the perfect program yet.

Which means everything is a compromise. What I want from an Aggrigator is:

• Unobtrusive
  Doesn't dominate the computer with a full bloated program. It must be silent most of the time, hide away in the shadows (like the butler) and discretely alert me to things of interest.
  
• Alert me to new things
  I don't want email type notifications, or having to start the program to check what's new. I want something that appears on the task bar. Maybe a little Messenger type pop-up when something changes.
  
• Efficient headline access
  It must allow me to efficiently look at what's new. I only care about the headlines, I can navigate to what I want based on that information.
  
• Easy to mark all as read
  Sometimes alerts come in lumps. I'd like to scan all the new ones, and then mark all as read so that I can easily spot when new ones arrive.
  
• Sensible navigation
  What's so great about plug-in browsers? You're only milking someone else's stuff. If the program is smaller and unobtrusive, I more than happy for it to kick off Internet Explorer when I find a headline I want to click through.

Well, this all sounds like sensible stuff. Why can't I find something like that? I have no idea. All I can tell you is what I currently use and why I use it.

I use NewsDesk from Wildgrape. I use it fundamentally because it's free and has nice taskbar behavior. When NewsDesk is minimized it only shows up as a taskbar icon. Bliss. When you right-click on that taskbar icon you get a menu of new headlines. Click on a headline and it starts Internet Explorer. That headline automatically becomes read and disappears from the menu.

I can even mark sections of headlines as read when they don't interest me. This makes surfing very efficient. Every now and then I just right-click on the taskbar and see if anything grabs my interested.

It also has a full RSS viewing program built in, but I've never found one that makes sense to me, so I avoid it. Too much information can be a bad thing!

--- Justin

*Why does ATOM exist? Why don't we use ATOM? ATOM is new (relatively) and a lot of RSS Aggrigator programs don't support it. RSS being much older is just used more. ATOM might be better, I don't care, you can use ATOM from my site too. RSS support however is essential even if blogger.com doesn't promote it.