I am an avid reader. Or better put, I used to be, with modern life style you end up having too much time on the computer and not reading, at the end you only scan websites or blogs every once in a while. I am afraid a quick check in the Wikipedia doesn’t count as “reading”.
I always thought that I read a lot of blogs, but when I looked at my blog reading habits, I realized that I kept saving blogs post I found interesting on Evernote and never reading it again. I was thinking on how useful RSS are. Are there people really using them? An by using them, I mean, really reading the relevant blog posts?
I started a personal crusade in order to find the most beautiful RSS out there (if I have a pretty client, maybe I would look at my RSSs more often). On my research I found Fever, an RSS reader created by Shaun Inman. I seems that he encountered a similar problem and decided to create the “perfect” RSS reader. I have used Shaun’s Mint before and I thought it was a great tool so I decided to go ahead and purchase the RSS reader.
It is true, you have to purchase Fever, it is 30 dollars and it is a bit too geek for most people, but what it does is pretty awesome. You have to install the client on your own server, this way it gets updated without you noticing (wich is very handy). Fever has two very interesting features. First thing is that you can label your RSS in two categories, Kindling, where you put your “Must Have” RSS and Sparks where you put the rest (and as many RSS Feeds as you can, the more the better).
On this Sparks you have the best feature of Fever, it checks the posts on all your repository (and in the internet) and gives a temperature (like body temperature) the news that are relevant get higher temperature and the big news are so high that have fever. This is good because if you scan your hot sparks you can see what is very important and not miss it.
Having said this I usually dont read the posts on the Chill Pill client (natively reads Fever), I read some short posts, check out some photo blogs I like or comics, but not read the posts. For the posts I find interesting I add them to Instapaper and then I sync it on the iPad, here is where I read it, waiting at the doctor, or in the night before going to bed. I am glad that finally I found a way to read interesting blog post and keep myself up to date with all the cool stuff out there.
As a side note I also use Zinio on the iPad, since I have lived in seven countries in the last ten years I am unable to carry the piles and piles of .net Magazine, Computer Arts, National Geographic, Photoshop User and many others. With Zinio I carry it all on the iPad, isn’t that cool?
I have to confess that I am reading books on the iPad now too, I use Good Reader and it works perfectly for me.
Bye bye, paper.
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