Tired of the same old network news? RSS NewsReaders will help your old mouse grab the news as it happens!
These days, I've become thoroughly exasperated with the news. One of the trade-offs of living in the backwoods of Virginia is access to amenities city dwellers have such as good cable. Since we opted for clean air, water you can drink right out of the spring and acres upon acres of woods before the nearest neighbor, I shouldn't complain. But cable TV is one thing I truly wish we could get. Since our only cable operator ceased operating on May first, I have had to resolve myself to network TV and its decidedly slanted news. Network TV news shows have far too much time on their hands and get paid far too much for delivering nothing.
In a crusade to stay tuned to what's really happening in the world -- and the Mac community -- I've discovered the real pleasures of Newsreaders. With the wide-spread popularity of blogs, another internet phenomena has emerged, the RSS aggregators.
RSS means "real simple syndication" and basically anyone with a web site and XML coding can spread their news (syndicate) through the RSS system. Likewise, those same web sites can tap into literally thousands of other websites also aggregating their news. You've probably been looking at RSS feeds all along and didn't know it. Most of the Mac 'news' sites all tap into the same feeds. So the news you see on MacNews is the same as Mac Observer, Macworld, MacCentral or MNN. Sometimes they put their own spin on it, but in reality it's all the same news just aggregated via the RSS.
News Readers (as they're called) are small software programs you can either access via your internet browser, or install on your computer to tap into the same syndication channels the big-time news guys do. It's fun and you wouldn't believe the wealth of feeds that are available. With your RSS news reader you can grab the news, as it's posted from thousands of different websites -- usually with a single click. Most of the better news readers attach a time stamp so you can see how old the item is. I frequently see articles posted minutes or hours ago. Since I log on at 5 am, eastern time, I had the Apple security story within three hours of being posted by Apple. It's kind of exciting.
I've only just begun investigating, but out of several I've tried so far the Rocket RSS Reader is the one I use the most. This one's web-based so you can 'plug in' even while on the road. All you need is a computer and the internet. Rocket allows you to set up your own news feeds based on topical searches -- you simply search for items of interest and Rocket returns matches from the huge data soup of RSS networks. You can 'join' specific feeds, or simply run your searches each time you log on.
I've got about a dozen news feeds in my 'favorites' and quite often do searches as well. For instance, when Lynn sends his part of the weekly InfoManager, I sometimes jump into Rocket Reader and search for the news items he has mentioned. I often get as many as sixty different sources and slants on the very same article. If it's Mac oriented, I also get the spin of all the various Mac news outlets.
Rocket presents the news in "bursts" -- a linked title, and a single synopsis of the news item. If you like you can click the triangle to expand the news item. It's not unusual to get twenty, thirty, sometimes sixty 'hits' on a single article. It's almost too much to deal with.
The Rocket RSS Reader is a free personal news and information tool that allows you to search, subscribe, read and track content from thousands of RSS and Atom newsfeeds and Weblog sources. (Atom is another news feed service.) What I like best is their easy interface for creating your own keyword based RSS Channels for news that is relevant to you. And, there's no download, installation or training required. You log in, set up an account and you're off and running.
reader.rocketinfo.com/
Even if you only peek in once a week, you should get yourself a newsreader. It may just introduce you to a whole new way of keeping in touch with the world. It also may demonstrate just how lame network news really is.
Next, I'll introduce you to a number of excellent news readers you can select from. As I test and use them, I'll pass along my comments, and I invite you to send in your favorites as well!
Continue on to Part 2 of this article
Fred Showker, Editor/Publisher UG Net News
Fred Showker is co-editor of "MUG Info Manager," the User Group Network News service, and a founding Apple User Group Advisory Board (UGAB) member. He was an original founder of the User Group Forum on AppleLink Personal Edition which became America Online in 1988 ... read more
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