Hey all.
Just wanted to give you a quick heads up on a new RSS reader that I found. It’s called www.linkrdr.com and they take a novel approach to solving RSS overload. To be right up front, I’ve tried it, found it unique but it won’t replace my own personal Gregarius install.
1. It’s still in it’s infancy so you’ll get alot of errors. It says Beta on the site but gmail was on Beta for like 10,000 yrs so I never know where to set my expectations. Consider yourself warned.
2. I like the concept of grouping the same stories into one entry. It makes for a much easier read and you only have to see it once. Where it fails is with variety. For example, I added three tech sites, then three linux sites and many stories regarding the upcoming release of Ubuntu 12.04 showed up. Then I added a Formula1 site and it all fell apart. Given the sheer volume of currently active Ubuntu stories I couldn’t find any F1 news in my feed until the third page. Not ideal at all.
On their site they have this:
How do you determine what links are important to me?
Our relevancy algorithm takes into account a number of factors, including:
- How many of your feeds included the link
- If the link is to a site you click on frequently
- If the link is to a blog or site which doesn’t update often
- If the link is just one of many from a particular feed entry
Of course, there are more criteria in the ranking process, but the above are a good example of how we figure out what we think will be important to you
So after an F1 race my feed would probably be filled with race results stories which is good. But what if I don’t get to them right away and Ubuntu releases something else? The result would be the disappearance of most if not all F1 stories. Making the whole thing worse, I have tea blogs that I read which do not update alot nor do I read them frequently but when I do want to read them I don’t see the need to thumb through pages of other things to find something about tea. (I know I know, run on.)
So what do I find good about the site? Easy. If your write, blog, etc for a living this new RSS site would be a God Send. For example, if you want to cover just USB devices, this site would speed your info consumption greatly. Instead of seeing the same story posted, cross linked, etc etc across 4 -5 sites, you would only see it once. The amount of sites you could keep track of is staggering.
So there you have it, my initial review of Linkrdr. Good for some, not for me, maybe for you. Go check it out.