Last week we listed and categorized some of the leading topic-tracking tools on the Web (see also the follow-up post). The tools we listed were geared towards tracking news or media information on the Web. In this post, we look at a leading service that tracks more discrete, faster changing types of data.

Tracking shopping deals is the most immediate commercial application for alert services that go beyond 'topics.'

Trackle offers a large selection of feeds to subscribe to, including coupons, product price drops, deals on Amazon (tracking when the price for a product falls within a price range you're willing to pay), new product reviews, product recalls, daily deals, latest buzz in shopping, price protection ("...find out if the price of a recent purchase drops in time to apply for a rebate or partial refund.").

That selection from Trackle is impressive and will grow even more when data from sensors and RFID tags are added in the near future.

Imagine for example getting notified, when you walk into a bookstore, that a book you have on your wishlist is available on special in that store. Or you're doing your groceries and your phone alerts you to a deal in the store that day on blueberries, which you've marked as your favorite fruit and something that you want to track the price of. These kinds of scenarios could be achieved with a combination of services like Trackle, your smartphone, and RFID tags on product items.

Those examples are just a starter for ten, we can expect more sophisticated alert systems to evolve once Internet of Things ramps up in retail stores and elsewhere.

For now, let us know in the comments your favorite alert services!

We've also added links, to make it easier for you to check these services out.

These are services that output RSS and/or other formats, such as email notification. We think this type of topic feed tool is the most flexible, particularly when it outputs RSS. With RSS feed output, you can do further filtering or grouping of the feeds inside an RSS reader like Google Reader or Netvibes.

• Collecta
• GigaAlert (limited free service)
• Google Alerts
• PubSub
• Regator
• Swamii (email only, no RSS)
• Topikality
• Trackle (email only, no RSS)
• Woofeed (email or mobile, no RSS; it also provides a publishing service for bloggers)
• Yahoo Pipes
• Yotify (email only)

Destination Services

These services don't output RSS or emails for topic searches. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means you have to visit the destination site to see results every day.

• Cascaad
• Ensembli (offers email digests)
• Guzzle.it
• LazyFeed
• My6Sense
• Technorati
• YourVersion

Social Filter

These services show what is popular or new amongst their respective communities. There are many other such services, so the following is just a sample:

• Delicious feeds
• Google Trends
• MashLogic
• Searchtastic ("smart Twitter search")
• Trendistic ("see trends in Twitter")
• Twazzup (Twitter search)
• Twitscoop (Twitter search)
• Twitter search (e.g. for hashtags)

Community Curated

Similar to social filter services, only these have a specific community driving the output of stories. Again, the below is a small sample:

• Digg
• Hacker News
• Reddit
• Slashdot

People Curated

Topic-focused blogs (such as ReadWriteWeb!) are great for tracking topics on the Web. In recent times, light blogging services have offered an easy way for individuals or small groups of people to curate information on a given topic.

See also: interesting post by Tony Karrer about "topic hubs" for bloggers.

• Favit (see also this follow-up post on the Favit blog for details about their topic tracking features)
• NewsCred
• Posterous
• Tumblr

Aggregators / Portals

These services aggregate, or group, news and other stories around a specific topic.

• Alltop
• BuzzFeed
• Eqentia
• Google Fast-Flip feeds
• icurrent
• LinksAlpha
• NewsTwit
• PopURLS
• SNS Touch
• Topix
• TopSite
• Tweetmeme
• ViewsFlow

Market Intelligence

These are professional brand management services that you typically have to pay for. Many of them include topic tracking. Here's a sample...

• Filtrbox
• PeopleBrowsr
• Trendrr

Please add your further suggestions to our categorized lists in the comments.

During the process of analyzing these topic tracking tools, we discovered - to our surprise - that not many of these services output results as RSS. Some of the leading apps in this field require users to visit their service. With that in mind, here is our full list and analysis.

Feed and/or Email Services

These are services that output RSS and/or other formats, such as email notification. We think this type of topic feed tool is the most flexible, particularly when it outputs RSS. With RSS feed output, you can do further filtering or grouping of the feeds inside an RSS reader like Google Reader or Netvibes.

The most common such tool is probably Google Alerts. However we were impressed with Topikality and PubSub, which both output RSS. Swamii and Woofeed don't output RSS (we wish they would), but at least they offer email notifications.

• Google Alerts
• PubSub
• Yahoo Pipes
• Topikality
• Swamii (just email, no RSS)
• Woofeed (just email or mobile, no RSS)

Destination Services

These services don't output RSS or emails for topic searches. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means you have to visit the destination site to see results every day. I've been impressed recently with the user interface and features of LazyFeed, Regator and My6Sense - they're all worth checking out.

• LazyFeed
• Regator
• My6Sense
• Technorati
• Ensembli (offers email digests)
• Guzzle.it
• Cascaad

Social Filter

These services show what is popular or new amongst their respective communities. There are many other such services, so the following is just a sample:

• Twitter search (e.g. for hashtags)
• Delicious feeds

Community Curated

Similar to social filter services, only these have a specific community driving the output of stories. Again, the below is a small sample:

• Digg
• Reddit
• Hacker News
• Slashdot

People Curated

Topic-focused blogs (such as ReadWriteWeb!) are great for tracking topics on the Web. In recent times, light blogging services have offered an easy way for individuals or small groups of people to curate information on a given topic.

• Tumblr
• Posterous
• Favit

Aggregators / Portals

These services aggregate, or group, news and other stories around a specific topic.

• Tweetmeme
• Eqentia
• Alltop
• Google Fast-Flip feeds

Misc

We couldn't easily classify these ones, but maybe you can in the comments!

• Google Trends
• MashLogic

We hope this post is a starter for you to explore topic feeds. Let us know what apps we missed in the comments, as well as your thoughts on our categorization.

UPDATE: Top Topic Trackers (Updated List)

I think it's fair to say that I was totally wrong on that prediction. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, in particular, many more people 'subscribe' to people than topics (subscribe a.k.a. 'follow' or 'friend'). And I'm glad my prediction didn't pan out, because the social graph of people is much more interesting to follow than a bunch of keywords. But it begs the question: what happened to all the promise of tracking topics using RSS?

While many of us use Google Alerts and apps like LazyFeed to track keywords and topics, that's still a relatively geeky thing to do.

In a follow-up post in January 2005, entitled Why Topic/Tag/Remix Feeds Are The Future of RSS, I wrote that "tools will evolve to let people easily set-up personalized searches for information relevant to them and subscribe to the results [using RSS]." I wasn't suggesting that conversations or people are unimportant. On the contrary, as I explained in '05, "topic/tag/remix feeds will make it even easier to find the conversations that matter to you and indeed you are more likely to meet new people and discover new points of view."

That has certainly happened, but not so much due to RSS - more because of Facebook and Twitter. While RSS did expand over those 5 years, social networking services became much more popular as ways to track information.

Also, online media has matured a lot over the past 5 years. Nowadays people commonly subscribe to blogs and other news media across a variety of niches - and that's how they keep up-to-date on topics of interest to them. For example, I subscribe to NPR All Songs Considered and Pitchfork (amongst other sites) to get the latest alternative music news.

Both of these trends (the rise of the Social Graph; and maturing of professional niche media) have made topic feeds from the likes of Google Alerts less attractive than I thought they'd be 5 years ago.

However, I still believe in the promise of topic-based RSS feeds. Indeed I currently use a number of services to track a set of topics of interest to me. One is Google Alerts, which I have set up as RSS feeds in Google Reader. Plus I use a couple of services that launched just recently, LazyFeed and Regator.

Sadly, the promising services of 2005 - such as PubSub and Feedster - haven't made it as far as 2010 (although last year PubSub was born again under new management).

It's possible that LazyFeed and Regator won't last either, but let's hope that a startup soon finds the key to unlock the potential of topic feeds.

In the meantime I'm curious to know if you subscribe to topic feeds? If so which tools, if any, do you use to track topics? Please leave a comment. I'll write a follow-up post later this week, highlighting the best apps that are mentioned.

Image credit: shizhao

Related: Top Tools For Tracking Topics on the Web

What I learned from that discussion is that while the RSS Reader market is indeed in decline, there are still a number of compelling use cases for RSS Readers. Not to mention new tools worth checking out. So in this more optimistic post, I list 5 reasons why you should continue to use RSS Readers.

1. Control over Information Flow

RSS Readers allow users to control their flow of information, whereas it's impossible to keep up with the Twitter firehose of real-time information. Mathew Ballad (comment 11) put it well:

"I tend to check Google Reader multiple times a day. While I do keep up with bigger news through Friendfeed or Twitter, I like to keep up with multiple Graphic Design blogs, tech blogs, entertainment blogs, photography blogs and Apple blogs on my own. I just can't see myself ditching RSS Readers for something that I really don't have much control over."

It's not just about controlling your stream of daily news. Many people have feeds that they just don't want to miss. Tim Bray has a folder of feeds in NetNewsWire that he feels is "unacceptable when I don't at least glance at everything those people have to say."

Some people would argue that it's a thankless task trying to control your RSS Reader. I am one of those people and I long ago gave up trying to keep my 'unread' count at zero. Indeed nowadays I don't even try to mark as 'read' my email - using Gmail, I just let it all flow in and mark the ones I should reply to with stars.

On a similar point, RSS pioneer Dave Winer remarked (comment 80) that Google Reader "has the wrong view of RSS." In a follow-up post, he wrote that "fundamentally, Google Reader views RSS as email," by which I think he means users feel compelled to read everything in it. His view is that "reading every story is a meaningless concept" and that RSS Readers need to find a way around this issue.

2. Evolving User Interfaces

Some readers are expecting RSS Readers to transform their UIs in 2010, in particular for "processing life and news streams in the same interface." (Marco A Torres)

This has already happened to a degree in Google Reader, which has many nice social sharing features. @businessquests (comment 57) called Google Reader "a monitoring and intelligence tool enabled by tagging and publication of tag-based RSS feeds."

Eric (comment 19) agreed, commenting:

"I use it [Google Reader] not only as a constantly evolving newspaper, but to share and to create new snippets using the "Note in Reader..." bookmarklet. I also subscribe to others' interests and see what they have marked to share with me."

Eric also noted that he gets breaking news in Google Reader, thanks to its support of the real-time standard PubSubHubbub.

However a number of people complained that Google Reader isn't evolving fast enough in terms of user experience. I would put myself in that camp too. So, like me, you may want to check out some new feed reading innovations. Feedly (one of our Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2009), Fever (one of our Top 10 RSS & Syndication Technologies of 2009) and my6sense (an iPhone app - our review) are 3 apps that received multiple mentions from our readers.

We use Fever internally at ReadWriteWeb and I just today downloaded my6sense onto my iPhone. As an aside, note that two of those apps (Feedly and my6sense) integrate Twitter as well as RSS feeds.

3. Tracking Twitter

It's not necessarily an either/or situation between RSS Readers and Twitter. Lynne Pope from New Zealand pointed out (comment 44) that she uses Google Reader to track some Twitter accounts:

"Time zone differences mean a lot of good information can be missed in a tweet stream. Pulling the important streams into a reader means the information is readily available."

4. Mobile News

A number of people remarked that they commonly read their feeds via a mobile version of an RSS Reader. Something for those of us who are sick of being tied to PCs to do more of, perhaps. Bill (comment 46) wrote:

"I use NewsRob on Android to pull the most recent 250 articles from Google Reader via my home wifi. Then I walk out the door and head for the commuter train, where I will read my feeds while other poor souls are stuck with the newspaper. Same on the way home and late at night when I'm rocking the baby to sleep."

5. Categorized News

Perhaps some of us are finding RSS Readers difficult to use nowadays because we don't use them efficiently. If you spend some initial time setting up your Reader and categorizing your feeds, then chances are you will get a lot more out of it. Randy Orrison (comment 78) described a good use case that you may want to emulate:

"I have folders in Google Reader for the blogs that I check every day, new release feeds for software I use (I could never remember to check all 20+ websites regularly), and down at the bottom of the folder list feeds from busy aggregators (like TechMeme) and news sites (like the BBC)."

Conclusion

Reading through all 160+ comments on my post restored some of my faith in RSS Readers. Viva la read/write Web! I'm going to test out some of the tools people suggested, find new ways to integrate Twitter streams with my RSS feeds, read more on my iPhone using my6sense and other services, and do some re-ordering in my Google Reader.

What are your thoughts now about RSS Readers, given the discussion summarized here?

Frankly I'm more likely to use Google Reader to search for specific information nowadays, than to scan my subscribed feeds for their latest posts. So what's happened to RSS Readers. Do people still use them and is there still a viable market for them?

The first time ReadWriteWeb looked into market share for RSS Readers was 5 years ago, in December 2004. At that point, very early in the web 2.0 era, Bloglines was the clear leader and Google Reader wasn't even a glint in the milkman's eye.

2009 Update on RSS Reader Market

Well, unfortunately Feedburner no longer publishes any useful data about RSS Readers. The product has been infrequently updated since Google acquired it in June 2007 and it no longer even has a proper blog (a Google blog called Adsense For Feeds was the closest I could find).

Pheedo also has gone quiet from a blogging perspective - its last blog post was January 2009. Tellingly though, it has an active Twitter account.

The best data we have then is ReadWriteWeb's own Feedburner account. Here is the top 10 for Dec 09:

1. Google Feedfetcher 85665 (includes both Google Reader and its start page iGoogle)
2. Bloglines 38797
3. Netvibes 34894
4. FriendFeed 16269
5. NewsGator Online 6753
6. Firefox Live Bookmarks 2999
7. PostRank 2454
8. Windows RSS Platform 1587
9. Mac OS X RSS Reader 1307
10. Zhuaxia 1127 (a Chinese RSS Reader)

Feedburner's numbers always need to be taken with a large grain of salt, nevertheless we can see that Google is now over twice the number of Bloglines. There's little sign of life on Bloglines' blog either and its Compete.com traffic numbers show a decline since June 2009.

Netvibes, FriendFeed, Newsgator and PostRank are the only other english language competitors showing in our Feedburner numbers. The others are either browser (Firefox) or operating system readers.

Also note that Newsgator shut down its online RSS Reader at the end of July this year.

Conclusion: Google Dominates, RSS Readers Less Relevant

These statistics are by no means the definitive RSS Reader market numbers. They do clearly show two things though:

1) Google now dominates what's left of the RSS Reader market. Bloglines is hanging in there, but it seems like it's given up the fight judging by lack of activity in its blog and traffic dips.

2) RSS reading is a very fragmented experience circa 2009. People can monitor news and information via Twitter, Facebook, start pages like Netvibes, their Firefox bookmarks, their OS, aggregators like Techmeme, and so on.

Tell us in the comments how you currently read your RSS feeds and how often you check them in an RSS Reader - if indeed you still use one...

Update: I should add that our news writers use a variety of RSS Readers daily.

Feedly is much more than just another way to read feeds. Although it originally got its start as an alternative UI to Google Reader, today the service is part RSS reader, part social network aggregator and part search utility. Since its launch in 2008, Feedly's developer Edwin Khodabakchian has constantly added new features including Twitter and FriendFeed integrations, a river of news view, search tools, Mozilla Ubiquity integration, a Feedly "mini" toolbar and so much more.

Once installed, a click of a browser button transports you to the Feedly start page where you can browse through the latest news, comment, star, share, discuss and search through the articles displayed. As you read through the items, your activity is seamlessly synced back to Google Reader.

Although voracious RSS readers who subscribe to thousands of feeds may find using Feedly a bit slower than using Google Reader itself, a good many of the more casual consumers of RSS prefer Feedly's clean, easy-to-scan interface to Google Reader's more utilitarian look and feel.

Feedly for Chrome

The new Chrome version of Feedly is virtually identical to the one available for Firefox with only two major exceptions: there is no Gmail integration or Feedly mini toolbar available in the Chrome version just yet. The toolbar is one of Feedly's many innovative features which provides a floating bar that hovers at the bottom of your screen as you surf through blogs on the web. Toolbar buttons show you various pieces of metadata about the blog post you're reading, including number of Diggs and number of Google Reader shares. You can also save or share the post yourself in Google Reader or tweet a link to the article, among other things.

However, according to Khodabakchian, Feedly mini's omission isn't due to any technical issues. Instead, he notes in the comments of a Feedly blog post that the mini toolbar is in the process of being redesigned and when the Firefox version is complete and stable, he will then look into building a toolbar for Chrome. The estimated timeframe for its inclusion into the Chrome beta is 6-8 weeks.

How to Install Feedly for Chrome

In order to run Feedly for Chrome, you'll need to first install a dev build of the Google Chrome browser. These dev ("developer") versions of Chrome aren't as stable as the public release but allow you to play with yet-to-launch features like Google Chrome extensions, for example. And for Mac and Linux users, the dev release is your only option because Google has yet to provide stable versions of Chrome for those two operating systems as of yet.

After installing the dev release, you'll need to add the new Feedly extension to the browser.

Here's how to get started:

1. Download and install the Chrome 4.0 Dev Channel: Windows | Mac | Linux 32-bit | Linux 64-bit
2. Restart Chrome to make sure that you are running the 4.0 version.
3. Load http://update.feedly.com/release/feedly.crx to install Feedly.
4. Click on the Feedly icon on the chrome toolbar to load your Feedly.

After you have Feedly up-and-running, you can receive support through the company's Get Satisfaction page or by emailing feedly-chrome AT devhd.com. You can also tweet @feedly_chrome with questions, comments, and other feedback.

We're beyond excited to see Feedly on Chrome - although it was relatively easy to give up most of our Firefox extensions when we made the move to the Chrome browser, Feedly was one of the few that was sorely missed. However, if you're a more cautious user hesitant to install test builds of your browser and experimental extensions, you may not have to wait much longer before you can play with fully functional and stable versions of both. Yesterday, Google put out the call for developers to begin submitting their extensions for inclusion in the upcoming Chrome extension gallery, a step that signifies that this feature is closer than ever to launching. When the time comes, we're sure that Feedly will be among the top-rated extensions found there.

Spectives and Readfresh are the sites in question, and both offer thumbnail images and a limited amount of text. Readfresh monitors sites and brings the most recently updated sites to the top of a user's page, allowing users to see what's new at a glance. Spectives, on the other hand, gives users "one page, a lot of pictures, updating constantly" from RSS feeds and websites. Read on for a side-by-side comparison and our assessment.

In other words, if you already know what sites you want to read, but Google Reader makes you cross-eyed and/or frustrated, either one of these sites might be great for you to try.

Spectives

One thing we love about Spectives is that it takes the tech out of subscribing to RSS feeds. Users can add a feed or type in a web address and click a link for the feed or feeds for that page. The content then appears in a user's "collection" of feeds with no futher fuss.

Content consists of a post title as well as a thumbnail of an image pulled from the post.

Here's a quick, one-minute demo video:

And here's what our collection looks like:

Collections are shareable and linkable, and Spectives offers their own curated collections for popular verticals such as humor and gadgets.

But be warned: Only sites and feeds where Spectives can find images will be added to a user's collection. So it might not work for some types of feeds. And with this stipulation comes a couple bugs.

We were beyond disappointed and slightly confused that the site couldn't find images on Penny Arcade and for some reason, the site bugged out once when we tried to add Questionable Content to our collection and once again when we tried Awkward Family Photos.

Readfresh

One thing we love about Readfresh is that it doesn't rely on RSS feeds to serve updated content at all. Users simply enter the URL of the websites they want to track, and content is served, with a thumbnail of each website gliding to the top of the stack when the site shows new content.

According to the developer, Emil Schutte, Readfresh "uses a combination of text and image analysis to decide when a site has changed. That's where most of the interesting work happens. It attempts to zoom in on new content in the thumbnail image when a site updates. The results right now are usually pretty good, but it depends on the site.

"It also has some smarts to discover changes as quickly as possible without flooding sites with pings all the time."

Indeed, Readfresh seemed to do really well at serving timely content. However, users will see one thumbnail per website as opposed to one thumbnail per post, and each thumb links to the site itself, not to an individual post.

Also, we can't figure out a way to share our Readfresh collections, which is a disappointment, indeed.

Who Wins in a Sudden Death Round?

As of now, each site offers unique benefits. We like Readfresh's implementation of non-visual content and sites without RSS feeds. We also like Spectives' post-by-post updates, which will surely make content easier to keep track of. Both offerings need work, as newly launched products, and Spectives seems particularly buggy.

So which site wins you over, readers? Let us know what you think about these two products and visual RSS in general in the comments.

RSSCloud is an element that's always been present in the RSS 2.0 spec but has drawn new attention with the rise of interest in the Real-Time Web. The element was just added to the WordPress code this afternoon. The implications of this big vote of support go beyond reading WordPress blogs; this is the kind of traction that new technologies can leverage to gain support in many different applications.

Google Reader, the dominant RSS aggregator on the market, began a limited implementation of a related protocol called PubSubHubbub last month. Facebook-acquired FriendFeed worked with Google on that system.

Now RSSCloud has a posse. Half a million blogs are created each month on WordPress and if Google Reader keeps taking its sweet time checking those blogs for updates instead of turning on support for RSSCloud, it's going to look slow as molasses.

Real time updates could enable several things. Faster distribution of blog posts, more compelling conversations in real-time and a renewed timeliness for blogging vs. services like Twitter are all likely consequences. The list of possible technical developments on top of RSSCloud could be as open-ended as the developments enabled by the core of RSS.

RSS has made blogging viable by freeing readers of the requirement of visiting each site they are interested in. It has made podcasts subscribable. It has made wiki change notifications trackable outside the mess of the email inbox. It has made search a persistent action, instead of a one-off occasional delayed reaction. RSS is mixable, mashable, parsable, filterabile.

Now RSSCloud could add a real-time dimension to all of that. The paradigm just got a very big vote of support.

This move probably makes a lot of sense for NewsGator, as the company can now focus more on working with its enterprise and government customers. Running an online RSS reader is pretty resource intensive. For the most part, NewsGator was only duplicating Google Reader's features anyway, though it did offer a number of features that Google doesn't yet offer in its online RSS reader.

The most important part of the announcement actually comes at the end of the FAQ about the transition. NewsGator argues that its enterprise products have grown at a record pace in the last 18 months. The company also announced that its Social Sites product already has over a million paying users. Under these circumstances, offering a free online news reader probably didn't make any sense for NewsGator anymore.

Free Desktop Readers Will Live On

It's important to note that the company will continue to develop and support its free desktop and mobile readers, though NewsGator Go! for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile will no longer be available for consumers after August 31. NewsGator's browser toolbar and desktop notifier will also be discontinued.

The Good Stuff Machine

While my6sense is a capable feed reader in its own right, it's what my6sense's founder Barak Hachamov likes to call the company's "good stuff machine" that makes all the difference. While traditional feed readers just organize items chronologically, my6sense actually watches what you do while you read your feeds. The app, for example, looks at messages you read, links you click on, items you share and the position of these items in your stream, as well as items you skip. You can also actively mark a message as interesting by clicking the 'I like' button.

After you have spent only a few sessions with the app, my6sense will have already gotten a good sense of the items that are probably most relevant to you. Of course, the more you use it (we used the web app regularly since the beta launch last December), the better the recommendations get.

In our experience, my6sense's algorithms do a great job at figuring out a user's interests. If you are a real news junkie, you will probably still sometimes want to switch to the regular timeline mode that organizes items chronologically. After all, the items you don't usually think you would be interested in can sometimes really grab your attention (which is, to be honest, a problem that all recommendation systems have to grapple with).

Import and Share

It is worth noting that the app can also import your streams from Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, and Flickr. From within the app, you can also share the most interesting items you find on Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed.

My6sense can import your feeds from Google Reader, iGoogle, MyYahoo, Newsgator, and NetVibes. Thanks to this, it's quite easy to get started. Sadly, though, the app doesn't sync with any of these services, so items you read on my6sense won't show up as read in your Google Reader subscriptions. My6sense also offers a curated lists of feeds that new users can subscribe to.

A Few Things to Improve

There are a few nagging omissions in the app, though, that keep it from being really great. Most importantly, you can't tell the app to only display items that were posted in the last 24 or 48 hours. In a way, this makes sense - after all, the app is trying to give you the most relevant items, including those that you might have overlooked. But often, we just want to see what the most interesting items posted today are, and as of now, my6sense can't do that.

Another problem with the app is that once you import your social network feeds from Twitter, Facebook, or FriendFeed, your timeline often gets overwhelmed by these items. At least for us, my6sense performed far better when we disabled these feeds.

Currently, my6sense also doesn't offer an offline mode, so you can't use it to read feeds while on a plane or far from the nearest cell tower.

Overall, we recommend you give my6sense a try. After all, the app is free, and importing your feeds from your current feed reader is easy enough - just give it a day or two to see if the recommendation system works for you.

Prior Art?

While the patent was filed in November 2003, it is not clear when exactly VoloMedia argues to have invented podcasts. In his blog post, however, Navar argues that this was "almost a year before the start of podcasting." We have wondered about this timeline, however. Using enclosures in RSS feeds was first publicly written about by Dave Winer in January 2001. Indeed, the system for downloading and distributing podcasts in Winer's "Payloads for RSS" from 2001 looks quite similar to VoloMedia's patent. When we spoke to Winer earlier today, he also pointed us to an early podcast by Chris Lydon from July 2003.

The podcasting movement only really picked up steam in 2004, when moving downloaded files to iPods (which were also just coming of age) and other MP3 players became a lot easier thanks to numerous developers who wrote the first podcast clients.

Looking at the patent, it quickly becomes clear that VoloMedia laid out the fundamentals of podcasting in great detail, including how to synchronize content between mobile devices and PCs. Navar argues that in November 2003, it wasn't obvious that users would start to download episodic content. Given that Dave Winer first met with Adam Curry to discuss the concept in December 2000, however, we really have to wonder if this claim would hold up under greater scrutiny. We asked VoloMedia for a statement and will update this post once we hear back from them.

More to Come

For VoloMedia, which just switched gears towards a stronger focus on serving ads after it fired its sales team, this patent obviously comes at a good time. With some luck, the company will either be bought by another podcasting company interested in the company's intellectual property (and Navar says that more patents are in the pipeline), or it will receive a nice influx of cash based on licensing deals with other companies in the podcasting business. That is, of course, if the patent really holds up...

According to NewsGator's Brent Simmons:

"The idea behind TapLynx is that you can take a collection of feeds and some artwork, make choices about colors and gradients and behavior (all in a configuration file you edit), then create an iPhone app. Without doing any programming.

But you can do programming if you want to -- use TapLynx as the base and add more features. (In fact, that's what I'm doing with NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone -- it's a custom app built on TapLynx.)"

Being able to rapidly develop customizable and unique iPhone apps with no need to learn Cocoa is great news to those of us who are interested in building such apps, but know very little about developing them. We are anxiously awaiting for TapLynx to make its way out of beta, but meanwhile you can sign up for the SDK here and the company will let us know when it becomes available. Be sure to follow @taplynx on Twitter.

The core of the plugin is the ticker, though, which also features a nice pop-up with a story's excerpt when you hover the mouse over a story. While a lot of similar tickers can be distracting because the developers insist on making new stories scroll horizontally, Feedinvader just fades stories in and out, making the ticker far less intrusive.

Feedinvader's feed reader itself is also worth a look, too, though in its current iteration, it is held back by a few missing features. By default, Feedinvader uses a standard, email client-like, three-pane view, with a color scheme that is somewhat reminiscent of Microsoft Outlook. You can also switch to an 'expanded' view that shows the full content of a feed without a separate pane for the headlines, but one feature we really missed in Feedinvader was a river of news-style view. What's far worse, though, is that you can't mark a story as read, and hence you also can't see how many unread items you have in any given feed or folder, making Feedinvader almost completely useless as a stand-alone feed reader.

On the positive side, the RSS reader does allow users to import and export OPML files and even import Live Bookmarks from Firefox.

If you like the ticker feature, then the feed reader definitely makes for a good way to manage these feeds, but we wouldn't recommend you ditch your favorite RSS reader like Google Reader, FeedDemon, or NetNewsWire for it.

As of now, because feeds aren't marked as read (at least as far as we can see), the ticker will loop from feed to feed, instead of listing stories in chronological order, making it best for small, high-value collections of feeds instead of a way of keeping an eye on a large collection of sources. Because of this, we would rather recommend you use a program like Snackr if you are looking for a news ticker.

Pingdom also reports that the average loading time for the Pingdom feed was about 0.8 seconds, which has gradually improved since March. Overall, this number might be a good indication for the health of the Feedburner service, but for most users, 0.8 seconds will probably mean very little, as it often takes Feedburner 15 minutes or more to even update a feed with a new post.

The Feedburner service has definitely had its fair share of problems, including major issues with the stats it reports, but uptime was never really Feedburner's most pressing problem. On our personal blogs and here at RWW, we have often seen that Feedburner would not respond to pings or took far too long to update our feeds.

While we have seen a few startups in this space, including FeedBlitz and Feedsqueezer, for most bloggers Feedburner is still the de-facto standard for managing their RSS feeds. And while it is nice to see that Google is doing a good job at keeping it up and running, it would be nice to see some general fine-tuning of the service. Even Google is now getting into the real-time web, and RSS feeds, which used to feel like a very speedy and efficient way to subscribe to information, but now are starting to feel rather slow.