Tag Archives: RSS

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

What Is the Problem With Netvibes?

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Don’t know if you’ve been keeping up or not, but I’ve been using Netvibes as my chief RSS aggreation service, in part because it has the flexibility to pull in all sorts of different data/feeds/sites (text, podcasts, videos, misc news services, etc.), but right now, we are knocking on a 24-hour period where the site has either been down or just unable to load my customized page.

How long do you wait on a web-based service like this before you write it off as too unreliable?  I don’t think a day is long enough for me to do that, but I will definitely scout around the webs for other options (I will have some normal news-reading time on my hands, after all).

This sort of occurrence always leads me back to my position that if you want to rely on the Internet, you’re better off hosting it yourself.

PS – If anyone actually knows what’s up with Netvibes in general right now, by all means, do tell…

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

Swallow It

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In case anyone was curious, I thought I would offer an update on the issues I was having recently with a mandated switch to web-based mail at work.  To sum up: it means I have to give up Thunderbird as my mail client, and also choose a new RSS delivery system.  I ended up going with the Netvibes option after I discovered an easy way to import an .opml file that had feed information.

As I play around with netvibes a little more, I’m coming to realize that it really is a powerful and flexible system for aggregating syndicated web content.  I was previously using the bare minimum of options, and just checking out a few of the other possibilities helped me to think through still MORE content I could move to this page (beyond my RSS feeds).

If I discover anything exceptionally fantastical or noteworthy, I’ll probably let you know (even if you haven’t asked, because that’s what blogging is about).

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

Eat It

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I find myself in a quandry as my place of employment changes over to a completely web-based email and calendaring system.  For about 4 or 5 years now, I have used my email client (either Outlook or Thunderbird) as my RSS aggregator as well.  I’ve been quite happy with this setup, because I like having browser windows open for Internetting, not really for mail, or word processing, or all the other crazy crap that seems to only be in “the cloud” these days.  In my mind, the beauty of RSS was that is could take the Internet and deliver it to me like mail.

One other issue that I have to admit has started to crop up in Thunderbird is that, since I read feeds in a few different places, I end up with repeats of “new” content, or subscriptions that are out of sync.  So, even though I could probably just stick with Thunderbird and use it only as a feed reader (and I might), I am entertaining other options.  Here are a few of the things that I’d like:

  • I want a reader that I don’t have to pay much attention to. I’m gathering the feeds because I want my cage rattled when there’s something to read.  Even if I’ve gathered a number of feeds in one spot (to avoid traveling to all those sites), it’s still not worth it to me if I have to actively go and look at that page.  So, I need a fairly concrete and active alert system.
  • Which items are new should be completely obvious. This might seem like a “duh” request, but I note it largely due to the RSS functionality built in to Firefox, which, while simple to use, doesn’t have a very intuitive display scheme, and it doesn’t notify you when there are new items.
  • Syncing all my subscriptions would be nice. But it’s not necessarily required.

Soooo, the options that are immediately clear to me are the following (do you know any others?):

  • stick with Thunderbird
  • use the live bookmarks feature in Firefox exclusively
  • pull all my feeds into my netvibes page
  • start using Google Reader
  • download a completely different RSS client (fat chance)

There must be options that I’m overlooking, or things I’m not thinking of, so if you have a comment, by all means feel free to share…

General, Uncategorized

Leaving a Note for the Future…

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Just want to mention to myself and fair users to come– if you’re going to read this blog via RSS, I really recommend doing so via the ‘Live Bookmarks’ feature in Firefox.

This method preserves the visual style of the page, and allows for quick and easy commenting on posts. Of course, if you want to use some other reader, it’s your life– I’m just trying to run it…

Should also just mention– odds seem really strong that this wordpress is going to be the next incarnation of my blog.  Still need to smooth out the edges, but it seems pretty promising.