RSS Feeds: Still Around, Still Good
Creed and Company Limited. Creed Teleprinter No. 3X, 1927-1942. 1927-1942. Science Museum Group Collection; Donated by the General Post Office. Open: Science Museum Group. Artstor. https://jstor.org/stable/community.26291776.
The web is fractured and distracting! An RSS feed aggregator (or dashboard) is one way to collect the info you want where it’s convenient for you. I recently started using Glance, which is a self-hosted dashboard that can gather RSS feeds (among other info sources) from websites I use.
Not every website I want to get updates from has an RSS feed, but a lot do. Platforms like Squarespace, which my website is built on, automatically make an RSS feed available. Mine is https://anncooperwrites.com/blog?format=rss. So what to do with it? Add it to your dashboard! I publish two blog posts a month, but not on a strict schedule, so if you’d like to know when a new blog post comes out and you don’t want to wait for the links in the newsletter at the end of the month, you can use my RSS feed (or you can follow me on Bluesky @annccooper.bsky.social).
I really like Glance so far. You need to have a few things in place (like Docker desktop), but if you have that on your computer already (or you’re adventurous), then Glance is easy to get started with. I like that it’s simple to install, self-hosted, and free. Unlike lots of projects I’ve used—even good ones, sometimes—it just works with no additional fuss required. (I am not affiliated with Glance or compensated in any way for this blog post. I just like what they’re doing.)
Once you download the app, all you need to do to customize it for yourself is update the home.yml. If you’re used to writing code or working with an IDE (I use Visual Studio Code), it’s very straightforward. Glance can collect RSS feeds, show your weather, collect new posts on subreddits you follow, and lots of other stuff.
If Glance sounds a little too adventurous for you, there are other options! I haven’t tried these yet, but if you have (or you have a different favorite), please let me know—I’d love to hear from you!
Browser-based feed aggregators:
Feedly (free tier limited to 100 feeds)
Inoreader (free tier limited to 150 feeds)
NetNewsWire (for macOS and iOS, free, unlimited feeds)
Another self-hosted feed aggregator:
Yarr (also supposed to be easy to set up, but I haven’t tried it)
If you want to read more about RSS feed aggregators, here’s an article from Wired:
Now, with the time we’ll save by minimizing the web mess we wade through, let’s go write!