Vivaldi on Wired, not once but twice in one week!
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Wired came out with a great article about emails and email clients with Vivaldi front and centre on Wednesday and only a day later Vivaldi is highlighted as the best browser-based feed reader in an article about RSS Feed Readers. How cool is that?
Feeds users, what type of content have you subscribed to the most - news, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, etc?
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I was heavily into RSS/Atom feeds twenty years ago, straight out of Uni. Feeds were the big hip thing back then. Using the excellent FeedDemon and obsessively adding whatever semi-interesting feed I came across. However over time I found that I never managed to actually keep up with all those unread posts and feeds, and began to get information overload and stressed out - so I gradually dropped off feeds, instead deciding I didn't need to follow everything, everywhere all at once in my life to be informed.
I still used iGoogle for several years as a start page, to keep up with the most interesting tech/blogs/science/security/gaming articles. After iGoogle got killed off (do we call it "Sunset" these days?) I looked long and hard for alternatives, finally settling on Start.me which is decent enough (if you pay for it that is...) I find the advantage of a start-page based reader is that I don't feel like I always have to open everything, and can quickly see what's interesting in a single glance on the collection of feed "widgets" on the page.
Vivaldi's reader is really nice, but the default setting of mixing email with RSS is not for me - for me feeds and email are separate things and should be kept separate (to avoid info overload/stress). Thankfully, as always with Vivaldi, there is an option to do that
Over the last years more sites have hidden or outright removed their feeds, sometimes keeping them in source code for those who know where to look (or have a reader like Vivaldi to find and add them). And some sites might have felt that feed readers were "cheating" by being able to see what's interesting without actually visiting the site (and without getting served those precious ads!)
Vivaldi's RSS reader as well as other browsers jumping on the "feeds wagon" after Vivaldi might be a sign that feeds are coming back strong?
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There's some irony here that Wired's site doesn't seem to advertise an RSS feed, at least that I can see.
From their own article - "not having an RSS feed is a kind of damage. Ignoring those websites is a way to route around it."
But they do have a tiny link at the bottom of their page footer. They should really add that to their site's <meta> tag to make it show up an icon in the address bar.
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For me it's an even mix of podcasts and YouTube channels. Since they are all very topical because of my work, I like having them display in my inbox along with my mail. I also like the option NOT to do that when I want to focus.
If I had one wish it would be to be able to listen (or watch) one of my newsfeed articles in a separate tab so I can continue to clean out the inbox while I listen.
I know this is possible by (for exampler) opening the video to a YouTube page, but let's face it, the advantage of Vivaldi's feed reader is privacy that YouTube does not really respect.
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My 38 subscribed feeds are mostly news from specific web sites, and comics. I've been thinking about adding my YouTube subscriptions, but haven't decided yet.
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I have given up on using feeds. They are just another interruption. Instead I rely on bookmarks the wherever I want to follow the latest news for that YouTube channel or whatever. I can check whenever I want, instead of feeling compelled to look on receiving a notification.
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@Pesala For a while I subscribed to everything I could, but I did realise that was getting unmanageable. So now I use RSS feeds only for for blogs and sites that I either visit every day anyway or ones that don't update very often that I might otherwise forget about. It's nice to get a surprise every now and then when they do update.
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@Pathduck Great post! I was looking for a feed reader for a while until Vivaldi added one. I don't think it's really easy to use and organize your stuff, but it's still great that it's there.
Do you still use start.me as your start page (in Vivaldi)? If so, how's the loading time? I've been thinking about setting up a custom start page, and start.me looks really useful. I tried setting up a Notion page as a start page, but it's way too slow for my liking.
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@MoosMas said in Vivaldi on Wired, not once but twice in one week!:
Do you still use start.me as your start page (in Vivaldi)? If so, how's the loading time?
Loading times are fine I think. I don't use it as a start page, I just open it from the Vivaldi speed dials. For my use it's fine, and you can customise background images and widget colour/transparency etc.
I was in early and signed up for a "Lifetime" subscription for $50, which is no longer available, now they charge $20 a year for unlimited number of pages...
They used to have an email widget you could integrate with Gmail, but then Google made it much harder for third-party access and it was removed, which is sad because I enjoyed also having a mail widget available on the start page as well.
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@Pathduck Ah I see. Thanks for clarifying!
@Pathduck said in Vivaldi on Wired, not once but twice in one week!:
I was in early and signed up for a "Lifetime" subscription for $50, which is no longer available, now they charge $20 a year for unlimited number of pages...
It's a shame almost every company has switched or is switching to subscriptions. I'm only 20 years old so I haven't been around for too long, but I still remember the good ol' days where you only had to pay once for software, and it even included future updates.