Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008 - Page 2
Google Reader RSS Subscriber Count Greasemonkey Script
One of the simplest little changes we've made to our browsers lately is the addition of this greasemonkey script that shows the number of readers in Google Reader that any page's RSS feed has. You can usually multiply that number by 2 to 4 times for an estimate of how many total readers a feed has across all readers, but either way it's a great little indication of a site's popularity.
The script was written by an anonymous user named "uncv" and we'd like to thank them. We love what they've done! This was one of the 7 coolest browser tweaks from the last month that we wrote about earlier this week. It's already won a permanent place in our hearts!
Dapper
Dapper.net is a point and click interface for data extraction - a nice way to say scraping an RSS feed. We continue to depend on Dapper for all kinds of research, we're always finding new ways to use it around here. We love it.
Unfortunately, some sites don't like us to have access to links back to them available in our RSS readers (like Facebook, for example) and that really upsets us. In many cases those feeds that we created ourselves are the only way we'd be drawn back to a site, so it's their loss as much as ours.
Dapper has been around since 2006, but they recently launched a semantic ad platform that we included in our list of the top 10 semantic web products of 2008.
Twitterfeed
Love it or hate it, Twitterfeed has made a big impact on the web in 2008. It's the service people use to publish an RSS feed right into Twitter.
Some people argue that twitter is all about conversation and that publishing an RSS feed there is grating and inappropriate. We like getting our local newspaper story links on Twitter, though, and everything from disaster monitoring to traffic conditions are now available via Twitterfeed.
Feedburner
Google's RSS publishing service Feedburner hurt our ability to break news first, can't be used in many corporate environments because it gets blocked in China and only made 6 posts all year to its company blog, none since May. That's compared to 28 posts in 2007. Apparently once you get your Google money there's not much point in communicating with the people who depend on you every day.
Why would we call Feedburner one of the top 10 RSS products on the year then? Because despite how frustrating it can be, the service is still so incredibly useful that we don't know what we'd do without it. Not just for publishing and analytics for ReadWriteWeb feeds - from numbers to email delivery to FeedFlare links, Feedburner will work magic easily on any feed you work with. I've got 68 different feeds in my account and I'll probably publish several more before the year is up.
Pipes
Yahoo! Pipes is another RSS based service that is really frustrating, hasn't innovated substantially in the last year - but is still so powerfully useful that it deserves a spot as one of the top products in this market.
Splicing and filtering RSS feeds is the simplest thing to do with Pipes, but there's much more you can do with it as well. It's great for us pseudo-geeks, we can work all kinds of magic with it. We've used Pipes throughout the year to do things that we (ok I) don't have the technical chops to do otherwise. For that I thank the Pipes team a whole lot.
Those Were Our Favorites This Year - How About You?
Did we miss anyone you think should have been on this list? We hope you'll share your favorites in comments below. What RSS and syndication products impacted you the most in 2008?
Comments
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Nice list. Another neat RSS tool I thought I'd mention is Feedity - http://feedity.com - I use it a lot these days for creating custom RSS feeds from various webpages. It's like Dapper but much simpler and gives great results.
Hey Marshall, you could also mention Notifixious ( http://notifixio.us ) which brings notification to the RSS, and, for some sources, real-time.
It's an easy way to subscribe to your favorite sites (check out Bookmarklet!) and receive notifications where you like (Email, Text Message, Instant Messaging...). Also, you can easily filter your notifications.
Check our mashups if you need ideas for your first subscriptions: http://notifixio.us/mashups
I just recently found feedity.com and yes it is great. Some of the ones on this list I have never heard of, I will have to check them out too. Thanks
Plugging my own site:
www.rsstalker.com - create custom feeds to track price changes on your Amazon wishlist, new album releases (book releases coming soon) or web pages you want to read later.
-Matt
Marshall, good summary. Dapper + Pipes = pure awesomeness. I just used that combo just last week to make a pipe that spiders a blogger directory and create a single master RSS feed for all the bloggers in Phoenix, AZ.
I posted a 20min hi-def screencast on how to do it yourself here if you're interested: http://www.scrollinondubs.com/2008/12/09/yahoo-pipes-dapper-tutorial/
sean
Marshall, we're honored to be included in such a prestigious list. We've got some great things coming in January that will kick the new year off right.
I'd also like to give some props to Julien's Notifixious which has a great API implementation, including your favorite, XMPP :)
Marshall, thank you soooooooo much for the Afrigator honorable mention! You really should come for a holiday down to Cape Town so we can crunch some beers. Thanx again mate, we really do appreciate it!
I would have picked FeedHub as my top pick.
http://www.feedhub.com
I will go with www.newztracker.com I recently found on another site. Simple layout and 5-6 categories with almost real time news (I guess)
I highly recommend:
http://www.rssadvantage.com
Thank you very much
sohbet
I would have picked iNezha as my top pick.
http://www.iNezha.com
I've found newsgator a bit more friendly than Google Reader of late: more easily tailorable, easier-to-read presentation, and a handy topic-selector by label. It also "learns" a suggested selection of on-load stories based on past news views.
I would have to say the goodies over at xfruits are a mighty powerful collection of RSS related tools.
You'll immediately think of some creative uses for some of them.
Hi Marshall
New entrant, only launched 10 days ago http://www.Jobfeedr.com
Aggregates jobs from multiple job boards and then republishes in custom Twitter channels and RSS feeds by city and profession.
Saves Job Hunters lots of time and Tweets them new jobs in real time.
Definitely an application for these times.
Thanks
Mike
Sorry Marshall, just seen this post. Great recap of what went right this year :)
Dear Thank you very much for such participation
I have found these lists super helpfuL but man, I spend all of my time trying to tweak rss (so I can save time)!
Thanks.. very good :)
Posted by: Emre
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June 11, 2009 6:08 AM