All i wanted to do was take 2 feeds, mix them into one, and offer it to my visitors. To do this i sifted through tons of bookmarks related to rss that i had made over the last year, until i came up with 3 web based services that did just that. These are: RSS Mix, Feedshake, and FeedBurner. There are many other services out there, but most of the other ones i went to lost me on the first page and so i won’t be telling you how easy they were to use, etc. However, if anyone knows of a service that improves upon those discussed here, by all means, post a comment about it.

i’m going to start with RSS Mix, because it was the first service i actually tried after visiting about 5 other sites with similar features. The main reason is decided to use this one and not the others is because: it doesn’t require any signup, and so the is No Username, Password or Email (NUPE) dilemma. Always a smart choice if you want people to try your service but you may not be as established as some of the larger competitors in you market. This way the user gets to try the service immediately, and if they like it, they can sign up later to get some more of the added features. NUPE web services get the least resistance. i will almost always try them out the first time i land on their site.

RSS Mix was real easy to use, just copy/paste 2 or more feed URLs into the textarea and hit ” Create! “. You are then taken to a new page where your new mixed feed URL is waiting. I can’t see how this could have been any simpler and i have to say, this was exactly what i had in mind when i set out to find a suitable service. But wait, after having pasted the new mixed feed into a reader (netvibes in this case) , i noticed a few unexpected details. The first thing i noticed was that my feed no longer held it’s original title. That is, my new mixed feed now has the title: ” RSSMix.com Mix ID 117xxx “. Quite a mouthful.. and while i guess this would be fine for personal use, i’m not sure too many site owners would want their site’s feed title replaced by a free RSS service’s branding. I don’t think they have a member’s version of the service, so i’m not sure if you can actually remove this branding from your feeds before handing them out to your visitors.

So we move on to the second choice..
FeedShake was the next service i tried. At first, it looked very promising. i got to the homepage and saw what seemed to be a familiar interface. Enter your feed URLs (separated by a space) into the textbox, fill in the feed’s title, link, and description (all optional), and click ” Create my feed “. That’s it, or so i thought.

As it turns out, i was not done. i was instead just beginning. the next step in this process was the dreaded signup page. So only after you’ve spent your time pasting feeds, giving it a title, link, and description, do you find out that you need to be a members to actually use this service. One click away, but you still can’t burn your feed. i’m not sure if this was an intentional technique or not, or whether it worked on me but i definitely was not going to lose this feed mix that i worked so hard at preparing. So i caved and signed up for an account. Everything went smoothly and i was pleased to find that the feed i had created earlier (the reason i signed up in the first place) was still sitting there waiting for me. At this point, it was time to see how this new feed mix looked on my netvibes page. i loaded the feed onto my page and was thrilled to see that (as i had initially suspected) the title remained intact (unlike RSSMix) and said whatever i wanted it to say (no 3rd party branding). What’s more, the link points to wherever i wanted it to point and the description was also customizable (although these apparently don’t get used on netvibes and is not specific to any given feed URL). It will even load up your little icon file next to the title if you have one defined for your site.

And last but definitely not least there is the ever popular FeedBurner. Many times i’ve come to their homepage, read all the things that can be done with this service, felt intimidated or overwhelmed and left it for another time. Always feeling like i need to put away a large amount of time to deal with this whole new world of possibilities. With FeedBurner comes not just feeds, but podcasting, videocasting, an Ad Network, stats, pings, email subscriptions, FeedFlare, and more. there’s even an API to play around with but now i’m definitely getting ahead of myself. it’s a lot to take on when all you thought you wanted to do was mix two feeds into one. i always spend way too long reading through the entire FeedBurner site before i decide i’ve already wasted too much time and move on. maybe it’s because their services sound so interesting to me. this time i decided to sign up and take a look inside once and for all.

After wrestling with the dreaded NUPE dilemma for about another half hour, i finally convinced myself that it wouldn’t be so bad. Just give them the info and if their service is just too much, you don’t ever have to use it again. no big deal, right? Once i enter my info and hit ” Next “, i was taken to My Feeds page and told: “You have no feeds set up in FeedBurner. Go ahead, burn yours now! It’ll be a hoot.”

Everything looked cool and slick but i quickly began to feel like something was missing. It wanted me to enter my feed, a single feed. i looked frantically across the entire back-end to find a link that would lead me to the feed mixing section, but my search was in vain. there was no mixing feeds. what’s worse, is that you can’t even really look around until you enter in your first feed URL and hit ” Burn “. The closest thing i could find was a feature called ” Link Splicer “, which (all be it very cool in and of itself), was only capable of mixing in specific feeds like del.icio.us and Furl. i’m not sure if i missed anything, but this was definitely not what i had expected. On the upside, everything looks so cool and interesting in my FeedBurner account, that i can’t wait to use it for my feeds once i do get them all properly mixed.

but in general my vote goes to:

1. FeedShake (for actually meeting my expectations regarding this specific task – mix 2 feeds)
2. RSS Mix (for ease of use, not that feedshake is hard, but avoids a NUPE dilemma)
3. FeedBurner (disqualified, not really in the same class and probably shouldn’t even be in this comparison)

As you may have noticed, the title of this post is a deliberate play on Linden’s title. While i agree with him that Kedrosky seems to have totally missed the point of RSS (ie: you don’t blame a data format), i don’t think that all feed readers are the same. And so, Linden’s title still seems a little misleading to me. We both agree that the problem here is definitely software and i know of at least one feed reader that solves most of the problems described in Kedrosky’s post. Again, i’m talking about SearchFox.

As Linden has pointed out:

“RSS is just a data format after all. The problem is that the current generation of feed readers merely reformat RSS for display. They don’t do anything else, no prioritization, no filtering, no help dealing with the flood of information.”

I’m not going to deny the growing problems posed by information overload. But, in my opinion, SearchFox is a “next generation” feed reader designed with machine learning technology that both prioritized and filters information similar to the way Findory learns to assume what articles you’re going to be most interested in. The difference is, and this is why i hesitate to even compare SearchFox to Findory [see previous comments posted between Greg and I], the latter doesn’t let you choose your sources.

So, to go back to a common analogy that surrounds RSS: “We are drowning in information” [borrowed from Greg's post]. To this i would have to say:

i’d rather be drowning in an ocean of my own design.

oh, or maybe i’d also say:

Nobody forced you to swim over to the deep end of the pool. (that one sounds pretty mean though.)

[ For a more in depth comparison of feed readers (including SearchFox) you can read:"3 week shakedown, 2 RSS readers remain.", which is itself a follow up to an earlier post entitled:1 week comparison: SearchFox, Feedster, Pluck, Bloglines, Rojo, and NewsGator", which is itself a follow up to an earlier post entitled: "So you think you can RSS? How", which is itself a follow up to an even earlier post entitled: "So you think you can RSS? Why". ]

The Recap:

• RSS? Why. ( evolution of the Net and why RSS is so popular )
• RSS? How. ( how to start using web-based RSS services )
• 1 Week Comparison. ( a look at 6 popular web-based RSS readers )

The Breakdown:

SearchFox -

• Pros: really fast now – with possibly the fastest OPML import i’ve seen. (ironically, you get a message saying it might take 5-10 minutes for all the feeds to show up, 50 or so in my case, but it took about 3 seconds), if adding a feed fails you get a useful link to validate the feed (also there’s a quick link to the actual website to check if it’s online), machine learning technology is really starting to warm up (stories are given a score based on your interests which saves me lots of time)
• Cons: no way to sort by date (sometimes you just want to see the most recent articles for a quick second) [see comments], accident prone one-click delete (individual sites and entire folder of feeds with no warning), “email” this post requires a configured email client like OutlookExpress (sort of works against the idea of being web based)

Rojo -

• Pros: rename feeds (you’re not stuck with default name for any feed you want to add), easily find info on the feeds you’re subscribed to (by clicking the “i” icon), advanced sort capabilities (sort by: feed tags, how frequently read, unread story count, and name), “email this” post (a feature i actually started using regularly)
• Cons: i can’t see what date each post was made (only vague 2 hours ago, 5 hours ago, etc.)[see comments], tagging stories and feeds can get tiresome (time consuming)

Bloglines -

• Pros: tabs help keep things organized (not by much), icons associated with feeds (left sidebar) help when trying to quickly find a site, “email this” post (same as Rojo), organize your favorite clipping into folders (on the fly), preview this feed (just before you add it)
• Cons: favorite clippings are displayed in the sidebar (instead of the main window), clicking on top-level directory in “My feeds” makes all new feeds appear as read (that sucks), “mark all as read” link is kind of useless (see previous con), export OPML feature is unintuitive (file opens in browser instead of downloading the file automatically – user must click “file”>”save as”) and is hard to find because it’s all the way at the bottom of the left sidebar.

Newsgator Online -

• Pros: favorite clippings are displayed in the main window (instead of the sidebar), convenient “email this” post feature (same as Rojo)
• Cons: can’t seem to find any info on each of the feeds i subscribe to (# of subscribers, Feed URL), no way to rename anything (folders or feeds), no way to mark “all posts” as read (only mark “this page” or “this post” as read), no icons associated with feeds (icon save time when trying to find stuff fast), had some css problems with collapsible feed descriptions using Firefox.

The Shakedown: (and why they lost out)

• Bloglines – while it is probably the easiest RSS reader service to get started on, things quickly get disorganized to the point of no return. The result was that i eventually just exported all my feeds as OPML and imported them into SearchFox and Rojo.
• Newsgator Online – is most likely my 3rd favorite service of those mentioned above. And although there aren’t any major problems to speak of, something about the main user-interface just turned me off. For some reason the whole layout just makes me feel like i have less control over everything. Also, the company as a whole seems a lot more corporate; it makes me wonder how dedicated they are to the free “online” version of their software.

Conclusions:

With 2 RSS readers remaining, SearchFox and Rojo stick out as my favorites (so far). Looks like it might take a little longer to decided on just 1 service but i’m not really in any rush to choose. In the meantime, i’ll continue to use both of them regularly and probably post some more of my observations. i might even come up with some sort of wishlist or “things i’d like to see” in new versions of SearchFox and Rojo so stay tuned.

[ This is a follow up to a previous article entitled:"1 week comparison: SearchFox, Feedster, Pluck, Bloglines, Rojo, and NewsGator", which is itself a follow up to an earlier post entitled: "So you think you can RSS? How", which is itself a follow up to an even earlier post entitled: "So you think you can RSS? Why". ]

i can’t believe an entire week has gone by..
i wanted to take a couple of hours each day to test out these 6 feed readers, but i gotta say that i still can’t decide which one i feel most comfortable with. looks like i may have seriously underestimated how easy it was going to be to make this choice. in the meantime, let me just say, that i have become a full blown feed junkie, thank you very much (not sure who to point the finger at on this one – but it’s got to be somebody’s fault right?).

anyway, here’s how i’ve been doing it and what i’ve found:

i started by logging in to each service, in 6 different Firefox tabs, all in a single browser. next i began to mess around, but trying to give each feed reader an equal amount of my attention. first i used the directories to browse for new feeds, and the search box to find sites with content i was interested in. then i took a look at the account features provided by each service. could i change my preferences.. did i even have any preferences? there were many things to explore. i did notice that Pluck and NewsGator kept logging me out if i hadn’t used them for more than 10 minutes or so. while this might be a very secure and efficient thing to do, the result was that i ended up spending a lot more time using all the other feed readers – who wants to have to keep logging in over and over again every ten minutes?

once i got bored of that, i tried to import an OPML file, which is essentially just a list of many different feeds all conveniently packed into one file. very useful for quickly moving around all your feeds (ie: import / export). suddenly i had a ton of feeds in my reader (80-120), and things got all cluttered. things were a mess, so i figured this might be a good time to test out how well each feed reader was able to manage large numbers of feeds. i deleted and renamed feeds and folders, reordering them in a way that was most useful to me. options like: display only unread articles, mark as read, and sort by date, are all particularly useful in these respects.

here are some more brief observations i have made over the course of the week:

SearchFox –
Pros: expand/collapse summaries within feeds (Results), easy to navigate/browse feeds (DirBro), sort by day/week/month/favs/all (Results), ability to mark article as unread (Manage), machine learning technology (SpecO)
Cons: slow to add feeds (Manage) [this seems much faster now], no OPML import [see comments] or export (Manage) [this feature was added: 10/21/05], no account preferences (AccSet) – but they’re still just in beta.

My Feedster -
Pros: add feeds really fast (Manage), import/export opml files and urls(Manage)
Cons: feed results page is difficult to view (Results), no way to sort page results (Results)

Pluck Online -
Pros: fast loading pages (Results), import opml files but not urls (Manage), open stories in new window (Results), add bookmarks as well as feeds (SpecO), view Shadow pages (SpecO)
Cons: can’t tell which articles are new or have been read (Manage), no export opml (Manage), weird reloading browser window if you try to do anything (DirBro)

Bloglines -
Pros: sort results differently for each folder/category (Results), expand/collapse feeds (Results), import opml files but not urls (Manage), export opml (Manage), keep articles as new even after they’ve been read (Manage)
Cons: no folder is created when importing new feeds (Manage), saving favorites is a 2-step process (ClipFav)

Rojo -
Pros: import/export opml (Manage), expand/collapse summaries within feeds (Results), many ways to sort (Results), easy one-click save/flag entries (ClipFav)
Cons: no easy way to rename categories (Manage)

NewsGator Online -
Pros: easily mark stories as read (Manage), choice to view only unread items (Results), the only service where you log in on a secure (https) server (SpecO), import/export opml files and urls (Manage)
Cons: can’t keep articles as new once they’ve been read (Manage)

Some of these feed readers have special features that would require more extensive testing in order for me to really say which i liked better. extras like tagging feeds (Rojo), favorites (Pluck), communities (Rojo,Pluck,Bloglines), machine learning (SearchFox), could easily sway my decision. the only service i am sure i would never stick with is Feedster. aside from being fast, i often had problems viewing feeds, organizing anything, uploading my logo/image, and sometimes it just wouldn’t work at all. if i had to pick my favorite 3 out of these 6 readers, i would have to say Rojo, Bloglines, and NewsGator. SearchFox could be up there as well, because of it’s ease of use. but since it is still in beta, and because i am forever intrigued with the idea of machine learning technology, i will keep SearchFox around for another 2 weeks. in that time, hopefully i can narrow these 3 services (actually 4) down to my #1 favorite. wish me luck.

[ This is a follow up to a previous article entitled: "So you think you can RSS? How", which is itself a follow up to an even earlier post entitled: "So you think you can RSS? Why", and looks at the evolution of the internet, why RSS and other feed formats are so popular today, how to use them, and why you might like one service over another. ]