Back in the RSS

A while back, I was using Bloglines mostly because Justin said to use it. To be fair, Bloglines is one of the better web based blog aggregators, and so it wasn't so arbitrary of a choice. However, I wasn't the sophisticated surfer I am now.

I was blogging of the myriad locations I surf, and realized this was starting to be rather large. That made me think I should check out RSS aggregators again.

Let me tell you, there are lots. And lots. And lots.

Everyone and there web-surfing mother has an RSS aggregator.

There seems to be roughly two distinct styles of RSS aggregators. There are those that emulate Outlook, and those that emulate Yahoo.

Outlook has a distinct three panel display for email. On the left side is a number of folders. One is your Inbox. The rest are folders you create (there's .also Sent Mail). When you click on one of the folders, the middle column displays the email within that folder, ordered in reverse chronological order. The top is labelled with "Today", then below is "Yesterday", then is starts going back a few days, then "Last Week", then "Older". It breaks up the long list based on time.

The right panel which usually takes about half the screen is the display of the contents of the email, whichever was selected from the middle column.

An RSS aggregator using Outlook as a metaphor, has RSS feeds on the left column, instead of folders. In the middle is the list of articles for that feed (instead of email). In the right column is the RSS article, and typically a link to the full content. Some RSS aggregators can display the page in their software (if it's a web, they can use a frame, if it's an application, they might leverage off an existing web browser).

Bloglines doesn't quite use the three column method. It uses two columns. When you click on an RSS feed, the right side lists all the articles, one after another in row after row after row. It's like looking at multiple pages in Word, except each page corresponds to a summary of the article.

To that end, I am using Omea. Omea looks like Outlook, and I'm used to that view. It also keeps track of email addresses, bookmarks, etc., although I don't use them. Even though I don't care for Outlook as a mailer, I'm used to it after over a year of staring at Outlook email.

However, I also use a web RSS feed, and that's in the Yahoo style. Indeed, it is Yahoo, or My Yahoo. Go to news.yahoo.com. It's been recently redesigned, but it breaks its content in small rectangular boxes with five or six headlines. This is similar, say, to something like techmeme.com.

One reason I like the Yahoo style is because it looks familiar. Again, Yahoo's way of laying things out isn't quite what I like, but it is familiar.

My Yahoo lets you create multiple pages, and lay things out, sort of. There are one or two narrow columns and one wide column. Nearly everything goes into the wide columns. I have no idea what rule Yahoo uses to decide which things go in which columns, and they don't seem to clarify.

So, I have one page with my Sports RSS, one with Tech, and I'll probably even have one devoted to O'Reilly.

Some RSS aggregators (many, indeed) allow you to put RSS feeds into folders. When you click the folder, it intermingles articles from several feeds together. This is a bit unnerving to me. I tend to visit websites and thus I am getting only one site's content. Over time, I may get used to intermingled content.

RSS aggregators are a bit like multi-chat client. You generally get the basic features of chat, but the idiosyncratic features of each chat client often do not make it into the product. Still, multi-chat often makes up for deficiencies of chat clients. Many clients do not let you log in more than once, because they wonder why you would even have two SNs. But many people do. AIM recognized that, but Yahoo and MSN do not appear to think that way, and seem to favor one login.

I'm using yet another aggregator on my Mac. This is on the recommendation of Chris who uses Vienna, an open source aggregator. It can display articles within the application since it uses the Safari display engine. I don't think it's quite as good as Omea, but it is clean, which has its advantages.

I'd like to see something Reddit-like. Rojo is trying to do something like that, but I'm not feeling it from Rojo.

Now, you may think I know something about RSS because I'm blogging at length about it, but most of the aggregators I tried I've only looked at since this weekend, so basically, three or four days of mucking around with all sorts of aggregators. I know more and more will come around.

I am also looking at playing with wufoo.com. It's a website devoted to making forms. It's one of those Web 2.0 like places. Lots of fade effects, and so forth.

Then, there's the Google spreadsheet that just came out. There's also a competitor that's been out a few months longer called EditGrid. Needless to say, it will be interesting to see how they fare against Google. Google puts up a major challenge to Microsoft. Once they have a Word competitor (admittedly, Microsoft wants to roll their next-gen Word and Office products, with enhanced UI). Can they make products that cost nothing and make Microsoft really sweat?

Google has taken such an odd aim at Microsoft. How could search knock of Microsoft? It didn't. But it lead to ads. It lead to other free products. The spreadsheet, though, has to be one of those features that is going to be big. I'd say the other big one will be a Powerpoint competitor. Apple has Keynote which is supposed to be a lot better than Powerpoint.

There's a research presentation software called Slithy based on a Ph.d thesis from a guy at University of Washington, Seattle. He used Python and OpenGL to allow animations in slides, using a programming language. That should appeal to me, I think.

Ah, that's the software industry for you. It must drive average Americans crazy. While car manufacturers try to make more efficient cars and newer designs, they don't add unknown features that users would say "uh, what's that for?". But software does that all the time, and the alpha-geeks lap it all up.

I remember at ETECH, a guy asked "Has your RSS feed become more important than your email?". That's pretty heady stuff. While email deals with the mundane task of getting stuff done for work, the RSS feed is attempting to keep you informed at all levels, in an efficient manner. I'm beginning to see why some people feel they must have their RSS feeds.

I still rely on places like reddit to have the large number of geeks find interesting reading for me. There's always going to be that kind of viral community thing, where you let people who have more time than you find stuff that is of hopeful interest to you.