I’ve just posted a long review of ten top RSS feed readers and their handling of video, audio and images over at the SplashCast blog. It was one of those posts motivated by personal need – I need to find something better than NetNewsWire for my new video-intensive job. I believe that online video and audio are going to become an increasingly important part of what almost everyone does on the web – so this was intended as more than just a post on what’s out there now.
I won’t be writing here about all the posts I make at SplashCast, but this is one that I think is of relatively general interest and could help folks out in making decisions about RSS readers for themselves.
Switching readers can be done at any time, of course. The secret code word is “OPML.” Any decent feed reader will let you export and import a list of all your subscriptions in OPML format. Most will require you to download the file to your desktop then upload it elsewhere, but some readers give you an URL of your subscriptions in their service that you can just point to when you want to put those subscriptions in another reader. It’s a little tricky with Bloglines, but if you’re a long time Bloglines user you should make sure to try out some other tools. Desktop readers in particular. Bloglines users have to import from their desktop, following this path: MyFeeds, Edit, Import (see very bottom of left sidebar).
If you want to practice importing OPML files, try this one out. See that link next to the orange OPML icon? Right click (or cntrl click on a Mac) and save the link to your desktop. They you can import it into your feed reader and sha-pow – you’re subscribed to all of these at once. Bloglines won’t respect your folder, but other feed readers will put all of these together in their own folder titled “Big Pic Eco News.” Enjoy!
Not local, not issue specific, not necessarily from any particular perspective but big picture, popular news from folks who focus on environmental issues.
Contains:
- Popular recent items tagged “environment” in Del.icio.us
- Environmental News Network
- Gristmill, the blog of Grist.org
- Sprol.com, using maps and pictures to examine eco troubles world wide
- Tree Hugger, eco news for the hip and urban – I think.
- WorldChanging, a great group blog on many issues including eco solutions.