MacBasics: taking advantage of RSS

Posted by Don Foy Oct 20, 2006 at 10:38am

Do you go to several web sites a day for information? Get tired of reading through a bunch of press releases at your favorite web sites to get to the information you really wanted to see? In my job, Macintosh systems administration, I want to keep abreast of the latest news, rumors and reviews. But not everything is of interest to me, and I’d like to be able to skip the details of some of the news items, or at least glance over them and go on.

That’s what RSS is for.

RSS stands for really simple syndication. Most web sites now feature them. RSS is like a summary page of all the articles on a web site.  For example, you can see in a list the headlines for every item posted on Macsimum News.

Every Mac comes with an RSS reader—Safari (assuming you are using Safari 2.0 or better). And there are many other readers out there, some free, some nearly free and some a little more pricey. 

I don’t particularly like the way Safari handles feeds, but it is still a good way to see what RSS feeds are. Look at the URL bar in your browser (again assuming you are using Safari). At the far right of the URL bar, there should be a blue box with the letters RSS in it. That means the web site you are visiting has an RSS feed. Click the RSS box and Safari will show you a window with the RSS feed from that site in it. 

If you use OmniWeb, FireFox, Camino or some other browser, you can still find the RSS feed on most sites that have them. On Macsimum News it’s on the top far right of the main menu bar.

But I said earlier that I didn’t like the way Safari handles RSS feeds. So what do I like? A free, open-source program called Vienna. Vienna is hosted on SourceForge, a great source of open-source software for many platforms, not just the Mac.

Here’s what I like about Vienna: It works like I want it to. Its interface is similar to Apple’s Mail program. It has accounts in a sidebar on the left, an article title list at the top and a preview window below the title list.

You can set it to show you today’s articles only. Or to show you by colored indicators whether a post is new, updated or already read. Want to read more of a particular article? Just click on the title and Vienna will open the article in your browser or inside Vienna itself, whichever you have told it to do in the preferences.

Its greatest feature is its simplicity, which is how I judge a great Mac program. Do I need a manual to make it work? If not, that’s the first step to greatness.

There are many other features, but the ones I’ve listed here are the ones I use. 

The only thing missing from Vienna is syncing, and that’s not a major problem for me anymore. I used to use NetNewsWire and it was able to use my .mac account to sync my feeds between my 12-inch PowerBook and my iMac at the office. That meant I didn’t have to sort entries twice. But the syncing was erratic at times and when I got my 17-inch MacBook Pro, I was able to use just one computer to read my feeds and Vienna fits the bill quite nicely.

What’s your favorite RSS reader? Tell us about it in the comments.

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