Get Rid of RSS Once and For All
For those who still do not know what RSS means, it’s basically a website subscription. Rather than going to all of your favorite websites to read updates, you can subscribe by email or through an RSS reader. RSS readers, such as Google Reader, NetNewsWire, and FeedDemon can allow you to read all the news and updates you want without filling up your email inbox.
Many people will talk about removing subscriptions to minimize the amount of news updates. That is fine, but RSS can still control your life. How many people read through their RSS subscriptions everyday? How many people read every update that comes through? If you subscribe to several websites, then you probably skim through the updates and read what looks interesting. Do you get anxiety attacks if you miss your daily dose of RSS?
Let’s say you go on vacation and you forget about your RSS subscriptions. When you return, the updates have piled up and you have two options:
- start skimming through the hundreds, if not thousands, of updates, or
- select “Mark All Items As Read” and be done
The first option is very time consuming. However, the second option is also time consuming, unless seeing the number of new items does not bother you. For the same reasons I like to keep an empty inbox, I also like to have zero unread items. I might as well be shackled to my RSS. This is why I no longer use an RSS reader.
I have been without an RSS reader for about three weeks now and I do not miss it. I have let go of my fears and been much happier. This decision was not made on a whim, but rather because of technology limitations. Allow me to explain.
Not too long ago I was using NetNewsWire/NewsGator. I use multiple computers and unfortunately, they are not all Macs. When using my Mac I would use NetNewsWire and then on my PC I would head to NewsGator. NetNewsWire would sync to the NewsGator server and I would always know what items were read. Life was good.
Then I received an email from NewsGator informing me that they were ending their online reader, unless you were a paid customer. This was because the new versions of NetNewsWire and FeedDemon would now sync with Google Reader. Since I was not a paid customer, I had my NewsGator account deleted and moved everything to Google Reader.
I also gave up NetNewsWire because the new version would not work on my Mac, which runs on OS X 10.4.11. The new version requires version 10.5. Setting up Google Reader was not difficult. After getting a feel for the new interface, I liked it much better than my old method. Of course I would still go through my updates on a daily basis and mark items as read. I still worried that I would miss something if I did not stay updated. I was still in those shackles.
Then I discovered Alltop. I had heard of Alltop before and did not pay too much attention. However, after joining Twitter and following Guy Kawasaki, I took another look at Alltop. I immediately saw that this would be my new way of getting the news.
From Alltop’s website:
You can think of Alltop as the “online magazine rack” of the web. We’ve subscribed to thousands of sources to provide “aggregation without aggravation.” To be clear, Alltop pages are starting points—they are not destinations per se. Ultimately, our goal is to enhance your online reading by displaying stories from sources that you’re already visiting plus helping you discover sources that you didn’t know existed.
No longer do I have to worry about getting my unread count back to zero. This also helped me to let go of my fear. For fear was one of the reasons I subscribed to RSS. I wanted to be up-to-date on what was happening in the world, or at least the websites I was following.
Setting up my Alltop page was not difficult. You can view my Alltop page to see what interests me. Need help setting up your own Alltop page? There is a tutorial to help you out. Before the tutorial, there is a short video. Watch this if you have not already, it is only 90 seconds.
My first reaction to Alltop was that I no longer had to mark items as read. To me, this was huge. It felt like a weight was lifted. The second thing I noticed was that I had more websites selected on my Alltop page than I had in my Google Reader. Alltop has helped me find other sources of information that I would never have found otherwise. However, there were websites that were not found in Alltop that I used to subscribe to.
This is where Twitter comes in. I follow several people who I also subscribed to their websites. Many of these people post a link to their new stuff on Twitter. It made sense to not include their websites on my Alltop page. Yes, I have multiple places to locate news, but I no longer have to mark anything as read.
By not worrying about zero unread items I started to let go of my anxiety of always having to check what’s new. Sometimes I will go a few days without looking at my Alltop page. This has made my life much better and also allowed me to read other things both online and offline. I am free of the shackles.
I would like to know if you use an RSS reader or have email subscriptions. Have you tried Alltop? I am not affiliated with Alltop. I just feel more productive since using them as my online news source. Please let me your thoughts below.
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