Why I Changed Feed Aggregators
For the longest time I've been using Bloglines to read RSS feeds. I've used standalone readers in the past (NewsFox and Viigo) but I've found that there's no way to sync them (I read feeds on 3-4 computers, as well as my phone) and that was a real problem for me. Bloglines is very clean and fast. It's easy to use and works well when I'm on my phone. However more and more I've been noticing it "down for maintenance", and I've noticed others use Google Reader so I decided to give it a go.
I exported my feeds from Bloglines and imported them into Google Reader. I noticed right away that the layout was familiar (since it was similar to GMail), however I would prefer if I could have subscriptions at the top of the left pane, with Home, Trends, etc below them. As I browsed, I noticed that there were a few other annoyances. One of the things I enjoy about Bloglines is that if don't want to read a certain feed, I can simply click on it as I work my way through new feeds. With Google Reader, if you don't visit the article, it isn't actually marked as read. While technically more accurate, it's not what I'm accustomed to, and unfortunately there isn't a setting to change this. The other annoying issue, was related to Google Reader on my Blackberry... instead of being able to browse based on subscription, the items from the feeds are grouped together and displayed chronologically. This is horrid design compared to Bloglines mobile solution, however I'm finding I can live with the pain in order to have the standard Google Reader UI.
The thing that finally won me over to Google Reader is shortcut keys. I love keyboard shortcuts. The less often I have to use the mouse, the better and Google Reader is great for that. g + u and then you can type the name of the feed you want to read. Even better though is for when I'm browsing my feeds. I can use Shift+n (down) or Shift+p (up) to scroll through my subscription list, Shift+o will open that subscription and then n (down) or p (up) will let me scroll through items in that feed, using enter to open/close the items. It is extraordinarily handy and I highly recommend it to anyone that hasn't tried it yet.
Yeah the shortcuts for Reader are great. I especially love the "s", "S", "t" which stars, Shares and tags. And also, for when engadget gets too large "A", which marks all as read.
I sometimes wonder why anyone would bog down their news reader pulling feeds from 34 or more sites. There are web sites out there that do all the grunt work of gathering a wider spectrum of security specific news and make it available to users through just one feed.
For example, SecurityNewsPortal.com is pulling RSS feeds from about 3500 security focused RSS feeds. They crunch them down and make available all that news in to just 3 RSS feeds. That is convenience and saves my bandwidth.
For general IT security news :
.http://www.securitynewsportal.com/infosyssec/secu...
For the latest posting from security bloggers :
http://www.securitynewsportal.com/infosyssec/secu...
( which is where I found this blog posting…. )
For virus and malware news and alerts
http://www.securitynewsportal.com/infosyssec/secu...
Great links… I'll have to check them out a bit more. The main drawback is that I hate having to click through to view the content on a mobile viewer. I typically use the Security Bloggers Network feed (http://networks.feedburner.com/Security-Bloggers-...and a handfull of others for infosec related news.
I use Reader to track many feeds in different areas like infosec, sports, tech news, politics, business news, hobbies, etc. I find Google reader's tags allow me to read tagged goups of feeds much like reading different sections of a newspaper. Using just an aggregated feed service is a lot less customizable.
You can view feed items by tag by clicking on Tags link at the bottom of the 1st screen. You can also view feeds items by subscription name by clicking on the Subscriptions link. Since you like keyboard shortcuts, you can probably use the phone key shortcuts to navigate around quicker (unless you are using Opera Mini which seems to break this).
If you want to change your settings for mobile without using your phone to do it, you can also load up the mobile version of reader using http://www.google.com/reader/m.
My favorite part of Google Reader is how I can share my favorite posts with just one click! That is much easier than Bloglines!
Here ya go:
Still works.
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/10/13/blo...
Bloglines has had keyboard shortcuts for years. How to use them used to be on the front page, though I can't find reference to them anymore.
You can use free Feeddemon from newsgator. It is a nice SAAS type app.