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Feed me! Feed me NOW!

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I used to get overwhelmed by RSS feed-reading and declared bankruptcy almost every New Year. The trouble is, I’d just go and do the same again, building up my number of subscribed-to feeds to overwhelming levels: I just love being exposed to new ideas and perspectives!

Since I’ve been using Feedly, however, it provides a magazine-like front-end to Google Reader. This means I can merrily subscribe to as many feeds as I wish. It’s so much easier to manage. In fact…

I want more.

It’s a little-known fact that you can share lists of RSS feeds easily in a format called OPML. I want you to send me yours! I’ll collate them and share back the über-OPML file. I can’t wait to read what you’re reading!

Win/win.

Here’s how to do it (assuming that everyone’s using Google Reader…):

  1. Sign in to Google Reader
  2. Click on Manage Subscriptions at the bottom-left of your screen
  3. Click on Import/Export
  4. Click the link Export your subscriptions as an OPML file and save the file somewhere you’ll remember
  5. Go to http://dropitto.me/dajbelshaw (password = opml) and upload your OPML file

Questions/comments? Add them below!

2 Amazing Firefox plugins: Stylish & Feedly

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

Firefox LogoSerendipity’s a wonderful thing. It happens to me more often in this interconnected, Web 2.0 world. This morning, for example, whilst searching for something else entirely, I again stumbled across the Stylish plugin for Firefox. Given that I’m now running Firefox 3 full-time now, I thought I’d take it for another spin. Later, a tweet directed me towards Feedly. I’m in awe of both.

Stylish

Stylish enables you to view a website with custom CSS. Saying it in technical language like that doesn’t make it sound too impressive, does it? But just look at some of the things I was able to do with about two clicks via userstyles.org! 😀

Google (Stylish)

GMail (Stylish)

YouTube (Stylish)

In addition to this, and perhaps more useful (rather than just being eye candy) are those that change small things in your user experience. Take, for example, the one for Twitter that simply changes the list of people in the right sidebar from a small list of photos to photo + name:

Twitter (Stylish)

I love this sort of thing – users being put in control of their browsing/Internet usage experience. Go and check it out and see if your favourite sites/web apps have been customized yet! 🙂

Feedly

Feedly

The second Firefox extension I’m even more excited about. It’s called Feedly (see screenshot above) and I came across it via @derrallg on Twitter:

@derrallg

Feedly is a Firefox extension that, like the Stylish extension, needs to be experienced to be understood. It aggregates not only the RSS feeds in your Google Reader account, but those who are in your Twitter and FriendFeed networks. It calculates which are your ‘favourite’ RSS feeds (presumably from % read stats from Google Reader) and adds extra weight to them. Everything is presented in a very nice magazine-like format on the click of this button:

Feedly button

Here’s how easy it is to share stuff you think those in your network should know about:

Feedly (sharing)

I’m seriously considering ditching Google Reader for the majority of my feed reading now. Feedly allows you to annotate and save items for later – and to email the post directly to others or via your Twitter account. Marvellous! :-p

Further reading: Firefox 3 Power User’s Guide (Lifehacker)

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