Comments on: 3 week shakedown, 2 RSS readers remain.

By: elran

elran — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 04:49:42 +0000

right on,
thanks for dropping by michael.

i did not know that about the absolute time being available if you mouse over the relative time. i like that, kind of like a hidden feature. bonus. i just wish i could think of a good place to suggest putting it so that it would seem more visible to the user..

will you be replacing the relative time entirely? because, maybe you could add a choice to “view absolute time” or “view relative time” in the account settings>preferences>display. that way it wouldn’t clutter up the main interface and users could have it show up either way.

anyway, thanks for the heads up and i’ll be updating the body of this post with the new info as well.

By: Michael Eakes

Michael Eakes — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 01:30:02 +0000

Great suggestion. In Rojo, we’re making the publish time of a story appear as an absolute time (rather than “2 days ago”, etc). In the mean time (while not completely obvious) the absolute time is currently viewable if you mouse over the relative time. Thanks, Michael

By: elran

elran — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 05:24:35 +0000

well, i probably won’t include Findory in this side-by-side comparison.. but maybe in a seperate entry.
also, isn’t Findory more of a news / info site than an RSS reader?
one more thing, why is it that the last 5 out of 10 times i’ve gone to Findory, the site has been down? are they experiencing a lot of growth or is my internet connection just a little screwy..

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 07:00:46 +0000

I’m going to echo the comments of some other readers. Findory.com should really be included in this shakedown because I have to say that on using rojo, I prefer findory. It’s UI is more intuitive and its been kept simple stupid.

Thanks

By: admin

admin — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 15:57:26 +0000

hi moen:

i had a similar problem with adding a single feed. it would choke on it and then after a few seconds just returned a feed error.
turns ou the feed would not validate because of some extra white space at the beginning of the file. Both Bloglines and Rojo ignored the blank space and added the feed without a problem, but SearchFox complained. But once i figured out what was causing it stop validating, i removed the white space and SearchFox stopped complaining.

did you try contacting Esteban directly? (hey Esteban, do you think you can help this guy?)
hope everything works out for you though..

By: moen

moen — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 13:59:44 +0000

Well, you are doing better than me. I can’t get my OPML file to inport into searchfox to find out how wonderful it is. Basically the file uploads, the site thinks about it for around 30 seconds, then presents me with a blank page. Not terribly impressive as this same file works flawlessly with Rojo and Bloglines. Sadly, no one at the searchfox support email seems to want to look into the problem.

By: elran

elran — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 04:53:38 +0000

hey guys, thanks for all the input..

Greg: i have tried Findory a few times, and my first impression was a good one. always a good starting point for new and interesting stories. but i will give it another go, since you seem pretty enthusiastic about it. i like the idea of stories that surface allowing you to find other interesting articles.

Esteban: that is really great. i’m so glad you can sort posts chronologically. i was really missing this feature (i’d actually switch over to Rojo every time i wanted to see most recent posts). i was a little worried about turning off personalization, as i wasn’t sure if the effect would be permanent. this is actually an awesome function. Being able to “pause” or turn off a feature (even if it is the main feature around which your whole software is built) is always an excellent bonus in my mind. shows you’re focused on the user. good job. By the way, i’ve been experimenting a little with the “archive page” and “archive all” features. so far, i like them but i only used them when i’ve been away from my computer for a while (1 day or more). i’ll have to try using it more regularly and get back to you on that one. maybe i’ll do a post focused on SearchFox/Rojo productivity and workflow..

By: Esteban Kozak

Esteban Kozak — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 02:26:27 +0000

Nice, SearchFox RSS is making it to the finals. By the way, you can sort posts chronologically by clicking on “turn personalization off” on the upper right corner.

As for the workflow, I would like to get your thoughts regarding the “archive page” and “archive all” features. These features combined with the personalization engine make SearchFox the best way to process large sets of data. Here is how we envisioned the workflow: aggregate lots of feeds in a folder, read the most important posts (first couple pages) and archive the rest. If you sitck to it, you’ll start noticing huge productivity gains over Rojo. In addition, you won’t mind subscribing to lots of feeds because the important stuff always bubbles to the top. You can go back to archived posts using search or clicking on “show all”.

Let me know.

By: Greg Linden

Greg Linden — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 01:50:13 +0000

Did you try Findory (http://findory.com)?

Findory is a personalized news site. It learns from the articles you read and surfaces others interesting articles. Findory is unusual in that it not only shows you articles from your favorite feeds, but also shows you recommended articles from other feeds that you might not have found on your own.

You can get started on Findory just by reading a few articles, but you can also start by importing your OPML at http://findory.com/s/