Daring Fireball: For iPhone RSS Less is More
I must admit, I’ve stopped using NetNewsWire on my iPhone because I’ve just found it unmanageable. What was an awesome fire hose on my Mac just threatened to drown me on the much smaller machine. Enter Daring Fireball’s John Gruber with some awesome tips on making NetNewsWire on the iPhone far more functional:
What I want in an iPhone feed reader isn’t just a little bit different than what I want in a Mac feed reader, it’s a lot different. So what I did last week was start over from scratch on the iPhone. Rather than going through my full list of feeds and turning some off, I turned them all off, then went through and re-enabled about 20 feeds — the ones I like best, with the highest signal-to-noise ratios, and which would be most enjoyable in those I’m bored, give me something to read moments.
Now NetNewsWire is both snappier for him and more relevant to a mobile experience.
I tried it and I’m loving it. If you give it a try, let me know how it works for you!
January 21st, 2009 at 4:23 pm
To be honest, I am super new to RSS feeds and I really have no idea what they are, or what signal to noise means. I do however, have and use, NetNewsWire and it is one of my favorite apps on the iPhone. I have about 15 feeds and gives me something to read in between meetings or at the inlaws house. I actually have this blog on my feed, which is nice as I check it all the time.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Although NetNewsWire is a neat App, I rather use Google Reader myself. It’s more centralized and I already have the Google App on the iPhone.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:12 pm
@Elwan
Yes, another vote for google reader. All my feeds in one place and links back to the articles that I can choose to have reformatted for small screens (or not), and feed synchronization between my desktop and my iphone. Cross platform, cross Operating System, cross phone.
I’ve looked at the other readers and nothing comes close to Google Reader for manageability.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I have been using Web Feeds from the app store. It’s $3 but I like all of it’s features, including a built in browser to view the full article of something without going to safari.
I’ve been considering Byline for it’s offline reading and google reader sync but it doesn’t give you individual feeds, it just puts everything in one big list.
January 21st, 2009 at 8:24 pm
I use google reader too. And yeah, what does “signal to noise ratio” mean in this context?
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:58 am
I like the Byline+Google Reader combo much better. The interface seems much cleaner.
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:50 am
@Sting7k:
Re Google Reader? Set your default page to be the folders page and that way you arrive at a list of lists rather than one monster list.
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:46 am
as much as I know john is right, I still want a power rss reader that can download and read up to 200 rss feeds and post to all sorts of social media sites and lets me see them in the web page(maybe,as I know the iphone only does 8 tabs,so it maybe difficult).
I am still waiting this come on! iphone devs!
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:14 am
I have been using Feeds for a while and it has excellent support for Google Reader and is blazing fast.
February 4th, 2009 at 5:37 am
Signal to noise implies how much useful information you’re getting from the feed compared to the info you don’t (noise).
February 5th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Any thoughts on the new Nikon Coolpix P90? The 24x optical zoom looks fun.