nynim.org

I really dig the whole web-based RSS aggregator/reader thing. For the past year or so, I've been using reBlog on my Linux box at home. It had it's quirks, but it was great to use.

Enter Google Reader. Being the show-off's they are, Google has created a fantastic RSS reader web-app. I've ditched my home-based reBlog setup for using Google Reader for all my RSS feed reading needs. Here are the things which really won me over:

• Super-slick UI, with fantastic keyboard navigation support.
• Nifty AJAX tricks, like only loading enough items into the ListView to fit on screen initially and then fetching more as you scroll down. (Of course, they do this for performance reasons, but it's still implemented very cleanly and just "feels" nice.)
• You can "star"/flag entries that are useful, and then go back and look at all the articles you've flagged. It remembers the timestamp of when you flagged the entry, which I find handy. (Though most useful links I consume in a del.icio.us-fashion these days...)
• You can easily sort either by Oldest or Newest, and it saves that preference on each "view" (i.e. viewing entries from just one feed vs all entries) you have.
• Has an "infinite" scrollback feature, to allow you to scroll backwards through all the posts which Google has ever fetched for that feed.
• It's free. ;)

I would definitely recommend Google Reader to anyone that uses a fat-client RSS reader/aggregator, especially if you want something that does the aggregating 24-7 for you and is accessible from any computer.

I don't know about you, but I remember playing a fair amount of Street Fighter 2 back in the day. College Humor is running this hilarious series, looking into the lives of the Street Fighter combatants...10 years later. *insert suspenseful music here!*

http://www.collegehumor.com/tag:streetfighterthelateryears

I finally succumbed to recommendations of friends and picked-up the Firefly TV series on DVD...and it definitely didn't fail to impress. It's the best sci-fi show I've seen in a long time. It reminds me of ST:TNG in some ways, in so much as it's very character-driven, with engaging characters who are developed very nicely. I would certainly recommend it to any sci-fi fans who haven't had a chance to see it yet.

The fan community for Firefly seems to be alive and strong, and it looks like a fan-compiled Firefly documentary is on the verge of being released. I'm still debating picking it up... I know I can get fanatical about some things, but I'm not sure if I'm too that point with Firefly yet. I certainly wish that the TV series hadn't been cancel mid-1st-season.

http://www.donetheimpossible.com/

Like many people these days, I use RSS feeds to keep up on news from various feeds. But, with some of the higher traffic sites, since the RSS XML file only keeps the last 40 headlines or so, if I don't update the feed every ~12 hours, then I'll miss some posts. Since my iBook has been on the fritz lately, I've just been leaving it on 24-7, so I was able to have it auto-refresh every few hours.

This weekend, I was suddenly struck with the idea that it would be cool to have an RSS reader with a web-interface, and the RSS fetcher could run as a crontab job. This has the benefits of being able to be accessed anywhere, and to fetch new posts automagically, without needing some desktop computer somewhere to handle that.

At first, I thought it might be a cool home project to write up. Using some AJAX techniques, I could come up with a pretty slick interface. But, surely someone else must have had this same idea too, so I did some searching for existing open-source projects like this. And, sure enough, enter reBlog. This article gives a good overview of the feature-set, and also has a Google Video giving a short workflow run-through.

It uses a lot of AJAX tricks, and it even has full keyboard navigation shortcuts. It uses "," and "." as the default row up/down, but I was able to fiddle with the source code to map "j" and "k" to these same functions, so I could use it vi-style. ;) So, it's really easy to scroll through posts, mark them as read or flag them for follow-up. All the posts you flag (or "Publish" in reBlog terminology) go to a different bucket, which can be rendered to a RSS feed itself, I guess so you can point some other RSS reader to the list.

I'm just very impressed with the project. It's really just what I was looking for. The 2.0 version is still in beta, and I'm hoping by the final version they offer more flexibility/customizing. So, if you've ever wanted a web-based RSS reading solution, check out reBlog.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/opinion/19crichton.html