Information overload sucks and RSS

elran — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 22:48:23 +0000

There seems to be some kind of backlash building up against the widely popularized RSS feed format. Most recently, an article posted by Paul Kedrosky entitled: “RSS Sucks” caught my eye. Ironically, i noticed his article because i was browsing around in my RSS reader. I use SearchFox primarily, and without it i honestly don’t think i would have ever seen his post. I also saw a post by Greg Linden called: “RSS sucks and information overload” which was in response to Kedrosky’s article.

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". ]

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Information overload sucks and RSS