Independence for creators and readers has become a significant issue with online media. Creators want to retain control of the content they create rather than giving their content to a social media site like Facebook or Medium. Readers want control of the content they consume rather than having the content prioritized by an algorithm the reader cannot control.
The RSS system provides a way for a reader to locate the multiple content providers they want to follow and to make the process of having new content from these providers identified so they can access this content without visiting many individual sites. When enough readers use RSS, content creators can be assured that the good content they create will be accessed while they retain full control of this material.
Inoreader is a powerful RSS reader that is easy to use. It is free with limited features and capacity that should meet the needs of most readers. With experience and commitment to the product, it is easy enough to switch to a paid version.
The following video demonstrates the basic features of Inoreader.
“The day the good Internet died” is the title of a post by Katie Ringer lamenting what she sees as the decline of the Internet. She associates the date with the end of Google Reader which she argues was not even a great RSS reader, but easy and free and functional. RSS readers allowed users to select content sources (mostly blogs) that a user sometimes has found useful and then check the reader to determine when new content has been posted to these sources. A quick scan would indicate whether the new additions focused on anything of interest and the user can then open the promising content and read further. No doom scrolling through a feed of content from folks you might know or sources you sometimes find interesting but prioritized for your viewing by algorithms not explained to you and now assumed to increase your viewing time to offer the social media service the opportunity to show you more targeted ads and make more money.
Ringer’s observation is not unique (e.g., Wired story). RSS readers still exist and are better than Google Reader, but too few people use them. The decline of use has a secondary negative impact. Blogs are receiving less attention resulting in bloggers abandoning their independent outlets and focusing on social media aggregators (e.g., Facebook) to find an audience. Again, the reader ends up with less control of their content exploration experience.
Things may be changing. Google is exploring adding a “Follow” button within Google Chrome as a simple type of RSS. At present the button only exists within the android version of chrome, but Google promises they are working on a version for iOS.
For the time being, try the Chrome extension from Inoreader. As an RSS reader, Inoreader can be accessed as a website or from the RSS extension. You can get a free account that will meet the needs of most people at least in getting started.
The web option looks like the following with the list of feeds and controls in the left panel and snippets from unread posts on the right.
Adding a new feed to Inoreader works this way. In the left-hand column, locate the “Add new” listing. Options for the source type will appear. Adding a feed for a blog requires you select the “Feed” option. This will open a text field for pasting the URL for the blog to be added.
The use of the chrome extension works a little differently. If you are examining a blog and want to add the feed for that blog to InoReader, select the Inoreader icon in the menu bar. This will automatically enter the URL for that site in a text box and selecting the + button will complete the process of adding that feed. Selecting the icon from the menubar also provides access to unread links from the feeds you follow. Select a subscription and you can then view any of the unread posts.
I promote users making use of RSS and a RSS reader to control the blog content they consume. It is the best way to not give control of what you read to the vague algorithms of search and social media. However, I pay some attention to how folks get to my own posts and recognize that search and social media account for a substantial proportion of the page views. If not RSS, I suggest you follow me on Twitter to identify the headlines from posts you may find interesting. Twitter does not select content for you and you see the content of those you follow. Following Twitter link recommendations offers a form of discovery based on your trust in those you follow.
My Twitter posts can be located at @grabe. I do tweet about many topics and some political comments. However, all my blog posts automatically generate a tweet (as did this one).
I have long promoted RSS readers as a way to control the online content you follow. This post describes the RSS reader from feeder.co. Although you can use this service as a dashboard application, the unique advantage I see with this service is the opportunity to use it as an extension from within a browser.
The browser approach I am describing here makes use of a chrome extension. The service is available for other browsers as well. The extension is downloaded and installed through the Chrome Web Store. There are other reader extensions available so make certain this is the extension from feeder.co.
Once installed, the extension should show up as an icon in the menubar (see upper right). Within this app, select the gear icon to establish a feeder.co account and open the full screen view of the service.
This icon will also identify the feeds you have established and indicate whether new content has been added to any of the individual feeds since your last review. The top image shows what viewing a populated feed looks like.
You add feeds to your service by going to the full screen view, selecting the + button on the left (see first image), and then entering the URL (address for the the site you want to follow) in the search box. The system should then locate the RSS information for you and begin following that site.
There is a free and paid versions of this service. I make use of other RSS services that do not require a subscription fee for advanced services so I will probably not pay for this service, but still use the free level. The common complaint I have about many subscription services is that the lowest paid level is a substantial jump from the free version (roughly $5 a month in this case). I might pay $5-10 a year given what I know about competing products, but not this amount. Others may see something in the paid version of this service that it appropriate for their needs.
I admit that I am old and perhaps subject to becoming set in my ways. I even have a blog entitled Curmudgeon Speaks which possibly explains a lot. I try to keep up on the newest thinking on technology in education and the newest relevant tools, but I still employ a workflow based in RSS and social bookmarking. The young and innovative may not even know what these services are and promote Twitter, Snapchat, etc. to keep themselves informed. Bah……
Or, maybe not. I found hope in a recent post, discovered on my RSS reader, entitled “It’s time for an RSS revival“. I am guessing this writer is half my age, but he thinks like me. Actually, his slant is a little different. In this nice review of what RSS is, he offers RSS as an alternative to social sources and algorithms. He positions RSS and the RSS reader as a way to control what you want to read.
A quick review. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way to track updates to designated sites. In other words, what additions have been created since I last checked? You specify the sources – mostly blog sites for me. Software referred to as an RSS reader periodically checks these sites and identifies when something changes. The URL (web address) for the new content and some content from the change (the amount depends on what the author allows) appears in a list returned when you use the RSS reader. The reader keeps track of what you have looked at and typically removes this content from the list. Depending on the reader, there may be ways to keep the links to content you find useful. I typically keep what I find useful using another service (Evernote for me). So, to summarize – you identify websites you want the RSS reader to follow, the reader software identifies new content as it appears on these sites and creates a list for you to review, and typically when you review this list you decide to keep or ignore items from this list. Each entry on the list can be used to link to the full content from the original source.
My recommendation – I would try Feedly. The article I link to in the body of this post contains some other recommendations.
One of the challenges in using RSS is finding good content. You select the original sources rather than follow what others recommend. This is a challenge to which each user likely has an ideal personal solution. Perhaps you have little idea what blogs relevant to your interests exist. I can offer my recommendations, but others who follow blogs probably differ in what they would recommend. It is possible to get greedy and identify far more content than you want to review. A RSS reader at least reduces this challenge to scanning post titles and snippets of content.
Here is my suggestion if you have no other idea about how you would get started. I use a personal RSS aggregator on my server. You can scroll through recent entries to see the titles of the blogs I follow and connect to these blogs. You cannot use this aggregator as your own reader because that would defeat the purpose of allowing me to eliminate the content I have viewed. You can generate a list of blogs you might find useful to add to the RSS reader you adopt.
I have written about RSS readers and the value of setting up such readers several times. I is time to try again because I know few individuals I write for (mainly teachers or teachers in training) that understand or use an RSS reader.
Simply put, an RSS reader allows you to select online sites your value and then keep track of whether this site has changed so you can check on new content. The advantage of this combination of features allows you to follow a high number of sites you personally value without having to take the time to check each just to see if new content is available. Summary – RSS readers are about personal choice and efficiency.
My main use for RSS readers is to follow blogs. This is an ideal type of content for this technology because bloggers come and go and some post infrequently. It would be very time consuming to keep going back day after day to see if a blogger who posted on average once a month had been visited by his or her muse the day before. RSS can be applied to other content (static web pages that are changed from time to time, podcasts), but for me blogs are the ideal content for the use of an RSS reader.
If I could convince you to use an RSS reader, I would probably suggest Feedly (https://feedly.com) or Reeder (http://reederapp.com/). However, if you don’t see the value in setting up such a service, these suggestions would likely do little good. I want to try something different. I want to try to give you a feel for what I see using an RSS reader. Perhaps there will be some value in getting you to imagine how I might benefit from making the effort to use an RSS reader.
I enjoy having control of the technology tools I discuss. I have put in the time to develop some skills in running a personal server and I pay to rent server space as part of what has become a hobby. You don’t have to do the same, but I make the effort because it gives me a better sense of how things work. I came across an RSS system I could run on my server. I could use it to invite others to use this tool, but this is not really my interest. What this particular service allows is the opportunity to share access to what I experience using RSS. Users other than me have only “read” privileges, but seeing what I can encounter on a daily basis might be persuasive for some (try Feedly or Reeder if you are convinced).
The tool I have installed is called FreshRSS and you can take a look at
Take some time to explore the buttons that allow different views of the content (the simple list vs. the excerpts view). Note that when I view the excerpts and scroll from one excerpt to the next, the excerpts I have scrolled through will disappear (I can save by selecting the star icon). This is the idea in an RSS reader. You see what is new, can access the original source if what you see looks interesting, and the system then removes access to what you scroll past as the focus of the tool is on identifying fresh content you might like in an efficient way.
Many who read this blog may be unfamiliar with RSS and RSS readers. By some accounts, RSS is an old technology – still around, but not the way most now discover online content to read.
I still teach my advanced ed tech students how to use RSS to follow online sources. I make no apology for this. I expect technology leaders to be better informed than those who such leaders propose to assist and I believe RSS offers an approach to controlling awareness not available with social services such as Twitter. RSS allows the learner to identify valued sources and follow these sources for updates. It does not rely on others to locate and then share information from such sources. RSS and “social discovery” have unique advantages and disadvantages and I believe it is best to combine the approaches rather than to rely on one or the other.
If you are unfamiliar with RSS (real simple syndication), think of it as a way for a user to receive notice when sites the user designates have been changed. Such a system is particularly important with blogs and podcasts. A user might follow hundreds of such sites each of which may be updated on an unpredictable schedule. It would be highly inefficient for the user to go to each site and see if something has changed (a new post or podcast has been added). An RSS reader takes care of the searching and offers a user a list of just the updates.
I am presently using three “readers” (obviously more than I need, but I try to experiment to be able to offer recommendations). These readers include Feedly, Reeder 2, and NetNewsWire. I work mainly from Apple hardware and I use these services on both the desktop and the tablet. I have paid for accounts for Reeder and NetNewsWire. Feedly would possibly be my favorite, but their “pro” account requires a monthly fee. I prefer to pay one time and so use the free version.
Feedly
Reeder 2
NetNewsWire
What you see here are the desktop views for all three services. The systems look very similar. Each has three panels (not all may be visible) displaying the feed sources, the headline view, and a detailed view. The detailed view may contain the entire article or it will contain a smaller portion if the author has limited the amount of content to be made available via RSS. I use both the desktop and mobile apps, but prefer the desktop view because I like to scan the detailed views. I can do this quickly on a larger screen. Each service offers a button for moving from post to post (identified by a red square).
I use an RSS reader in a particular way. I prefer to use the readers to scan content and to save the material I want to use for some future purpose to Evernote. All readers offer some way to “share” content, but Reeder 2 works best for me. Evernote sharing is a “pro” feature in Feedly and not one of the present options in NetNewsWire. For those who do not mind an extra step, there is an easy work around. You can open the original article in a browser from the reader and then use an Evernote extension to upload the content from the browser.
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