Feedbooks provide an easy way for Kindle users to download and read RSS feeds directly on their device:

You can create a file for a single feed: http://www.feedbooks.com/feed
... or you can create a newspaper with multiple feeds: http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/create
Generate a Mobipocket/Kindle file and transfer the file to your Kindle through USB or e-mail
Once the file is on your Kindle, you can directly update your feeds inside the file, through the link on the cover or in the main menu of the file
You can also subscribe to these feeds/newspapers from the main website and download those subscriptions from the mobile website: http://feedbooks.mobi

Here's an example, just add this file on your Kindle to read the feed from Mobileread: http://www.feedbooks.com/feed/743.mobi

Help page on Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/kindle#rss

In what way is this different to me displaying RSS feeds as HTML text and running the result through mobigen?

In what way is this different to me displaying RSS feeds as HTML text and running the result through mobigen?

- No need for a desktop computer: you update directly the feeds from your device
- You get a TOC and can add multiple feeds to a single file
- Much easier to use

Hadrien,

I just took a look. It is very sleek. Thank you so much for the support of our kindle users, especially considering that you are working on your own platform at the time. :D

The format are even more friendly than the one generated by Mobipocket reader. However, did you strip all the pictures? That's kind of important for a gadget blog IMHO.

Hadrien,

I just took a look. It is very sleek. Thank you so much for the support of our kindle users, especially considering that you are working on your own platform at the time. :D

The format are even more friendly than the one generated by Mobipocket reader. However, did you strip all the pictures? That's kind of important for a gadget blog IMHO.

Sure, but for Feedbooks we don't have a vertical approach like Amazon.

Pictures won't be available for the first release, it takes too long to download. I'd like to make sure that everything works well and fast enough first, for all 3 formats. I'll work on the pictures once we've reached this point.

Sweet, Hadrien!

The RSS feeds look very promising, but I also just tried the book download from your guide for the Kindle... worked like a charm!

Many thanks!

Updated the template: I've added both next and previous links to easily skip between stories. With both those links and the TOC, it should be fairly easy to browse through such a document with multiple feeds.

I can now output multiple feeds into a single Mobipocket file (TOC + links to skip between the items of a feed available too).

Made another change to the template: on the first page, I've added a link to update the file. This way, even if you don't generate a specific guide for your RSS/newspaper you'll be able to update a feed.

The only problem that users might experience is related to updating a file a few times everyday. Since the Kindle can't support having 2 files with the same name, the Kindle browser will display an error message. But if you only download the feed once a day, you shouldn't get the message.

I might add a more precise date (not just day/month but also hour/minute) to get rid of this problem.

Last modification before the final release of this feature: I've modified the templates a bit.
- on each feed, you'll have an element to update the guide in the menu of the book (when you select the upper right corner of the page on the Kindle)
- on each newspaper, you can now access the different elements through the same menu

Should be online next week or early July.

Last modification before the final release of this feature: I've modified the templates a bit.
- on each feed, you'll have an element to update the guide in the menu of the book (when you select the upper right corner of the page on the Kindle)
- on each newspaper, you can now access the different elements through the same menu

Should be online next week or early July. Hadrien ... I'm so excited. Thank you for your work on this.

Hadrien ... I'm so excited. Thank you for your work on this.

I hope this will turn the Kindle into a useful device for RSS feeds too, not just e-books.

Of course this will also work with all Mobipocket devices, for example iLiad users will be able to directly download those Mobipocket files on their device too.

Hadrian, you are amazing!

Made another small change: in a public newspaper (when you create a newspaper on Feedbooks, you aggregate several RSS feeds. Such a newspaper can be public or private.) you'll be able to directly update within the file. This way a separate guide, like we do for public domain books, will only be necessary for private newspapers or if you'd rather list all your subscriptions in the same place. If you have a blog or a website, this will make things very easy for you: just ask your visitors to drop the Mobipocket version on their device once, and they'll be able to update whenever they want in the future.

I've also changed the behavior for links: we don't remove them anymore.

I'd love to see a blog specialized in book recommendations: every day, it would recommend a book, with a short review and directly link to the book. Loved the review ? Just click on the link and you'll be able to download the book.

You're publishing your new novel using a blog ? Add a link to the Feedbooks output and your readers will be able to update your novel as soon as a new chapter is available.

I could imagine a dozen similar applications and I'm sure that people will find much more great use for this.

I'll focus on getting everything ready for a release now...

Hadrien,

I just took a look. It is very sleek. Thank you so much for the support of our kindle users, especially considering that you are working on your own platform at the time. :D

The format are even more friendly than the one generated by Mobipocket reader. However, did you strip all the pictures? That's kind of important for a gadget blog IMHO.

Hey, with all his experimenting on a Kindle his own product will be mature right out of the box.

Dale

This really does look exciting, Hadrien. Can't wait for the next release!

Been working on the servers for the update and things are going pretty smoothly, hope we'll have everything up online this week.

One of the most interesting things to try once this feature is online will be to read a blook (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blook) (blog+book), which is basically a serialized novel published on a blog. For the last 2 years, Lulu even created a Blooker Prize (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulu_Blooker_Prize) to award the best blooks. I'm not a huge fan of LCD screens for reading, but with an e-paper device on my hands, things are much different and I'll probably start reading a few blooks and hope that I'll find one that suits me pretty well.

I even found a directory listing some of these blooks: http://www.pagesunbound.com/

As a proof of concept, I've generated a Mobipocket file out of one of the blook listed on Pages Unbound, and embedded the file with this post. For an optimal result, those blooks should probably offer a feed in both normal and reverse order, and make sure that all of the parts are listed in the feed.

Nate was kind enough to test the update on the Kindle and it worked. He also provided me several screenshots.

I expect to launch everything tonight.

Looking forward to it. Thanks! :)

Everything is online, might work right now for some of you, otherwise wait for another hour for the DNS to properly update.

Updated this thread with instructions for the Kindle, if you have any feedback, like to report or report or simply express your love for this feature: feel free to do so :p

VERY nice job. I couldn't be more happy with this. It's like getting a firmware upgrade almost, what a major new feature. I've created a newspaper and am loving it.

1 suggestion: I can imagine that if you put several feeds on one newspaper it could become difficult to navigate since the table of contents lists several articles for each feed. So if you want to go to the 10th feed on your list, you will have to press Next Page several times before getting there. I haven't actually done this yet but I can see it being a problem down the road. Maybe it would be good to first list just the feeds, and have those links go to the table of contents for each feed?

Just a suggestion. Still a marvelous new service and I can't thank you enough for doing it.

By the way, wonderful webpage, that looks like ruby on rails, yes?

Glad that you like it mateo. Pretty good suggestion, I'll keep on improving the template of course and I'll add links to the TOC for each feed.

The website is indeed developed with Ruby On Rails, I really love this framework.

One thing about the webpage... I created a newspaper and then later couldn't find my way back to it. It looks like unless you bookmark your newspaper you'll lose it. I can find links to create a new newspaper but can't find any list of existing ones... maybe that's just my bad navigation habits.

One thing about the webpage... I created a newspaper and then later couldn't find my way back to it. It looks like unless you bookmark your newspaper you'll lose it. I can find links to create a new newspaper but can't find any list of existing ones... maybe that's just my bad navigation habits.

I'll work on this part of the website too. I've focused mostly on the public domain part of the website which is far better than the user generated content and news parts for this reason.

You won't lose your newspapers though, they're always displayed on http://www.feedbooks.com/news as long as you're logged in.

I'll work on this part of the website too. I've focused mostly on the public domain part of the website which is far better than the user generated content and news parts for this reason.

You won't lose your newspapers though, they're always displayed on http://www.feedbooks.com/news as long as you're logged in.

Could you put some of your free time up on the website so that I can lease it? I just don't know how you have so much time to work on all this awesome stuff. I've had my new web server just sitting there waiting for me to get it set up and I just can't find the time.

BOb

I have tried subscribing and downloading several of the uploaded newspapers on feedbooks to which I have subscribed. I receive a Charset error and no content is displayed. Any ideas? Thanks, Adam

^^^^ I get the charset error on many feeds. Some I do not. So i think it has something to do with the way the feeds render. But what's more strange is that sometimes feeds from the same website (For example, the Wall Street Journal paper that's listed on feedbooks) some will work and some will get that error.

This is just the first release and I'll continue to improve the whole thing, but most RSS feeds are a mess. Different charsets, all sorts of tags in different feeds, invalid XHTML etc...

Tidy helped me with most of the HTML problems that those feeds have but charset is still an issue, sometimes I cannot get the charset directly and need to detect it. Sometimes iconv fails to transform from one charset to another etc... That's why you get this message on some feeds. This problem is not random at all, it depends which charset is used for the feed. For the Wall Street Journal, I guess that they must be using different charset encoding then...
I haven't experienced this problem with the feeds that I'm using (for example:http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/114 ) but I know that it exists. In the upcoming weeks I'll improve the part of the website dedicated to RSS/newspapers with new pages to browse, search and display your content. Along with these improvements I'll see if I can get rid of some of these charset errors through better charset detection.

Already made a few changes on our development server: all of the feeds in the WSJ worked. I'm gonna do a few more tests with the NYT for example that had a similar problem. I'll probably update everything tonight.

Updated this feature. The problem with NYTimes and WSJ: they encode their HTML tags with HTML entities (which is plain ugly).

NYTimes: http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/287.mobi
WSJ: http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/10.mobi

Hadrien - This is absolutely fantastic. Thanks so much. Whatever you did to fix the WSJ and NYT charset errors has also fixed several other feeds that were not working for me.

Now my challenge is to find some good full feeds. The partial feeds work well for getting a "quick-view" on the day from the WSJ, but I've discovered getting the first sentence of a commentary isn't going to cut it.

Does anyone have a good method for discovering full feeds? (Not for the WSJ, but just in general content that post full feeds.)

Again, you are doing amazing work.

Hadrien - This is absolutely fantastic. Thanks so much. Whatever you did to fix the WSJ and NYT charset errors has also fixed several other feeds that were not working for me.

Now my challenge is to find some good full feeds. The partial feeds work well for getting a "quick-view" on the day from the WSJ, but I've discovered getting the first sentence of a commentary isn't going to cut it.

Does anyone have a good method for discovering full feeds? (Not for the WSJ, but just in general content that post full feeds.)

Again, you are doing amazing work.

For the BBC: http://www.barnesdmd.co.uk/stuff/bbc-full-feeds/
Otherwise you can try this script: http://labs.echoditto.com/fulltextrss

Don't know if a repository of full feeds exist, but it would be useful. Try several web 2.0 services and look for tags such as "full-feeds" otherwise.

Updated the links inside the file: http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/114.mobi
From the menu where you can access the Table of contents, there's links to the different sections of the newspaper. Those link will redirect you for the table of content of each feed. Should make navigation easier in a way similar to what mateo asked for.

I am getting an application error while trying to get to my newspaper now...

Error 500
Application error :'(

http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/2275.mobi

I clicked on your link on the page for "This item is not working" as well.

I am getting an application error while trying to get to my newspaper now...

Error 500
Application error :'(

http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/2275.mobi

I clicked on your link on the page for "This item is not working" as well.

It's a problem with mobigen on the first item of your newspaper. Can't do much to help on this issue (mobigen is still in alpha for Linux). Try the ePub and PDF output, you'll see that it works. If you remove the first item, the Mobipocket output will work.

Thank you so much, Hadrien! I will know to only add one new feed at a time and test its compatibility going forward. It's up and running now.

Thank you so much, Hadrien! I will know to only add one new feed at a time and test its compatibility going forward. It's up and running now.

Nah, add a bunch of them and once on the page of your newspaper if you have a problem you can directly access those feeds and try them separately.

I'll see what I can do, but getting something that works with 100% of the feeds is pretty tough.

Added a section in the help page for the Kindle: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/kindle#rss

There's also new images/embed codes for the feeds and newspapers. You can put them on your blog/website if you'd like your visitors to read the feed in PDF/ePub/Mobipocket.

http://www.feedbooks.com/images/site/feedbooks-rss-mini.pnghttp://www.feedbooks.com/images/site/feedbooks-newspaper-mini.pnghttp://www.feedbooks.com/images/site/feedbooks-pdf-mini.pnghttp://www.feedbooks.com/images/site/feedbooks-epub-mini.pnghttp://www.feedbooks.com/images/site/feedbooks-mobi-mini.png

Hadrien, I'm trying to build a newspaper with 9 feeds from the L.A. Times (since my Kindle version doesn't have images).

After selecting MobiPocket/Kindle for my template, I clicked on "OK". Now I get this little swirly "I'm working" thing that won't stop. Have I added to many feeds at one time and it's just taking a while to build or has it hung on me. Here is my paper link if it helps.

http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/2432

Also, when I was building the paper I forgot to rename each feed from "Newspaper Item" to whatever. I tried to click on the little red "x" next to the feed because the image text said "edit" instead of delete. Logic does say that a little red "x" would mean delete, so bad on me but it would be nice to be able to edit as well without having to start over.

Thanks.

Hey Hadrien,


I'm new, but this seems like it might solve my problem. Thanks so much!
Since you sound like you know you're stuff, maybe you could tell me, why images don't render in the final PDF?

Thanks
Tali

Well, I figured out what I was doing wrong and got past the swirly thing and set up my feeds. Now, when I download them to my computer and transfer to my Kindle, I have feeds with nothing but headlines.

Well, I figured out what I was doing wrong and got past the swirly thing and set up my feeds. Now, when I download them to my computer and transfer to my Kindle, I have feeds with nothing but headlines.

So, what was wrong with the subscribe feature ?
I took a look at the feeds that you're using, aside from the title, there's nothing in it: http://feeds.latimes.com/latimes/news/local?format=xml

Hey Hadrien,


I'm new, but this seems like it might solve my problem. Thanks so much!
Since you sound like you know you're stuff, maybe you could tell me, why images don't render in the final PDF?

Thanks
Tali

Downloading images for a dozen feeds could basically take a very long time and therefore timeout. I would like to avoid this mess as much as possible and will add support for the images once we're not sending queries to the third party servers anymore, but rather using a cache system.

So, what was wrong with the subscribe feature ?
I took a look at the feeds that you're using, aside from the title, there's nothing in it: http://feeds.latimes.com/latimes/news/local?format=xml


As I said, I was selecting MobiPocket/Kindle for my template and clicking "OK", when I got the little swirly thing (see image). I thought that clicking "OK" was subscribing me to all of the feeds at once. Somehow, I figured that I had to click on each feed to subscribe.

I don't know why my pages are blank except for the titles. I'm going to scrap everything and start fresh but it will be a couple days before I can get to it.

As I said, I was selecting MobiPocket/Kindle for my template and clicking "OK", when I got the little swirly thing (see image). I thought that clicking "OK" was subscribing me to all of the feeds at once. Somehow, I figured that I had to click on each feed to subscribe.

I don't know why my pages are blank except for the titles. I'm going to scrap everything and start fresh but it will be a couple days before I can get to it.

Probably a bug with the subscription on the newspaper. It would have created a subscription on the newspaper itself, which contains all the feeds rather than individual subscriptions on each feed.

As for the blank pages except for the title, it's normal, you're using feeds with nothing in them except a title. Scraping and starting again won't change a thing, you need to use feeds that contain something in them, not just the title.

So, what was wrong with the subscribe feature ?
I took a look at the feeds that you're using, aside from the title, there's nothing in it: http://feeds.latimes.com/latimes/news/local?format=xml



Downloading images for a dozen feeds could basically take a very long time and therefore timeout. I would like to avoid this mess as much as possible and will add support for the images once we're not sending queries to the third party servers anymore, but rather using a cache system.

Thanks Hadrien,
Can't wait! Got some online funnies I'd like to enjoy on the weekend :D

Fixed an issue with the subscriptions on the mobile website. You should be able to access them once again. It's another good way to update if you don't always keep the last version of the feeds that you're reading, or if you'd like to use private newspapers.

Hadrien, I noticed that I am able to get many feeds with full content using Mobipocket Reader but when I tried using Feedbooks I only got partial feeds. The problem, I think, is with the URLs. For example, if you use the following URL for Time - Most Emailed Articles:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/time/mostemailed

you get full content in Mobipocket Reader. when I paste this URL in Feedbooks, it dynamically updates the URL to something which only has partial contents. This is also true of many other feeds (WSJ, NYT, Google News, Slate etc) for which I am able to get full contents using Mobipocket Reader
but Feedbooks generates only partial feeds. I wonder of there is a way to fix this.

Feedbooks only generate what's inside the feeds. If it's a partial feed, we'll generate a partial feed.

Based on what I've tried a few months ago, Mobipocket Reader actually extract content too. I remember than on Techcrunch's feed for example, I ended up with dozens of pages of comments too, while in the feed, there's only the main story.

Extracting content is quite problematic:
- not sure that it's legal for a service to do this without the approval from the content owner (it's quite different from simply displaying what's in the RSS feed)
- it'll take significantly longer and can be a real ressource hog to do this live for hundreds of users at the same time

I'm having a brunette moment. I tried this once a year ago or so and gave up, and now I'm in the same situation. I have a newspaper. How do I add feeds to it that are already at the Feedbooks website without knowing the URL?

Thanks! :)

Currently, you have to enter the URL of the feed to create a newspaper. I'll refine this in the future and allow on the page of a feed to directly add it to a newspaper.

On the page of a feed, next to the feed's name you have the RSS icon. You'll find a link to the feed on this icon.

At least I wasn't missing something obvious ;) Thanks for replying!

I tried The New York Times and it was considerable smaller than the one done by Amazon... I was looking to cancel my subscription, but it looks like the Amazon one is more meaty.

Another question: How do I update the newspaper once it's in the Kindle, and how do I update the Feedbooks ebook downloading file, do I just redownload it or can you update it from the book itself? Thanks! :D

The NY Times feed is a partial feed, not a full feed. The Kindle blog subscription isn't using the public feed for the NY Times.

As long as you're not using a private newspaper, you can update the file on the cover (there's a link). Otherwise if you're running Windows, you can use NewsStand: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/newsstand

How do you delete a newspaper?

Thanks! :)

P.S. I consider myself pretty computer savvy and I have a lot of trouble finding out how to do stuff in Feedbooks... maybe make it more intuitive or provide more FAQs on how to do stuff?

Thanks again!

If I subscribe to EVERY single feed at http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/

would I get everything the NYT Kindle Edition has, if not more?

Also, does anyone know if each subsection has different stuff than the main section feed (i.e. the News section has a feed and some subsections with other feed links) or if it's just so that people can pick and choose which parts of the section feed to get?

Thanks! :)

Cant' say for the NY Times, as I don't have a Kindle.

The RSS part is still early in development (unlike the public domain part). We already provide extensive help for some things on the website (http://www.feedbooks.com/help) but the news part will evolve a lot in the future.

Hadrien, thanks for the great website!

for the news feed section, are you planning to add the support to include pictures? that'll be awesome for us kindle & iliad owners!

That's part of the plan but there's a few issues to deal with first. We have around 10k feeds in our database, and we need to make sure that things would scale with images too. It takes a lot more resources to download both the feed AND images for each of these 10k feeds.

Do you plan on adding support for Mac? I was pretty upset to find that I would have to manually download all my subscriptions :(

If there is no Mac support, would it be possible to add an option where I can download all my subscriptions in 1 click?

Do you plan on adding support for Mac? I was pretty upset to find that I would have to manually download all my subscriptions :(

If there is no Mac support, would it be possible to add an option where I can download all my subscriptions in 1 click?

If it's on a Kindle, you can also click on a link on the cover, to wirelessly update the file from your device.

If it's on a Kindle, you can also click on a link on the cover, to wirelessly update the file from your device.

Yeah, I just liked the possibility of updating all at once in the morning with the USB cable because I will be living in another country for the next year, so I won't have the option to use the wireless.

Thanks anyways though, Feedbooks is great!

NewsStand looks great, but I'm unable to get the program working - as soon as it opens I get a "not responding" error. Is this the price I pay for using Vista, or has somebody else had this problem?

Awesome!

NewsStand looks great, but I'm unable to get the program working - as soon as it opens I get a "not responding" error. Is this the price I pay for using Vista, or has somebody else had this problem?
I get the same error. A dialog box appears with the "not responding error" and then prompts the user that Windows will close the application. I'm running Windows Vista 64bit.

Nerdy curiosity post/question from a new ebook user. I just got my first device of this kind; a Kindle DX.

What is happening with this service as it is described in the first post? A file on my Kindle allows me to "Update" and what really happens then? Specifically:

1. It overwrites the old file?
2. It pulls directly from the RSS server(s)? Or it pulls from Feedbooks?
3. Where does the bandwidth go? Does this use the same data channels as the "experimental" browser?

Bonus: Does anyone want to elaborate on how they can afford to do this "free"? I was kind of thinking maybe Sprint recovered their costs/made money by getting a cut of the stuff purchased from Amazon.

1. No, you cannot overwrite a file while downloading something on the Kindle. You'll get an error and it won't allow you to do so.
2. From Feedbooks.
3. Same data channels as the "experimental" browser.

Bonus: they probably have to pay for any connection through the browser. Keep in mind though that a Mobipocket file is fairly small.

Two more things then:
1. What happens to the old data when you "Update this ___"?
2. How do you stay afloat? :) This is incredibly altruistic and almost too good to be true. I looked on your site for a donate button because as soon as I tried it (after your last post) I fell in love and wanted to help you cover your costs.

1. It's still available on your Kindle. You can remove it manually on your Kindle if you'd like or keep it as an archive.
2. We'll start selling e-books in the future. Buying books from Feedbooks will be the right way to reward us for our work.

Hell yea! http://illbeback.info/upload1/36/a/reading.gif

I have signed up on the feedbooks site... twice now. I'm not getting a confirmation email and I can't sign in, can't re-create an account because the system remembers my email address.

What gives?

I have signed up on the feedbooks site... twice now. I'm not getting a confirmation email and I can't sign in, can't re-create an account because the system remembers my email address.

What gives?

No idea, but did you look in your SPAM/Junk folder?

BOb

No idea, but did you look in your SPAM/Junk folder?

BOb

Of course.


No email has been received from them.

Given that my email provider is sometimes goofy about things though, I just double checked. Believe it or not, I don't use web mail and they delete a crapload of what they consider spam before I ever see it.

Thus... how do I get the system to resend my information?

I should be more specific, it's feedbooks I'm talking about, not this site.... just to be clear.

One question . I can't use feedbokks if i live in europe?. I read something about that for the international users we can't use the feauture of basic web..

Thanks in advance..

One question . I can't use feedbokks if i live in europe?. I read something about that for the international users we can't use the feauture of basic web..


I assume you mean you can't use it from your Kindle? Not sure... I asked someone that and got no answer. But, my suspicion is that if you can't use the Experimental web browser then no, you can't d/l from feedbooks via whispernet.

Of course, you can download on your PC and load it to your kindle with USB.

BOb

I assume you mean you can't use it from your Kindle? Not sure... I asked someone that and got no answer. But, my suspicion is that if you can't use the Experimental web browser then no, you can't d/l from feedbooks via whispernet.

Of course, you can download on your PC and load it to your kindle with USB.

BOb

International users should try our URL based mobi index eBook that allows direct download of eBooks. I suspect it will work. A similar thing could be designed for feeds so they could be downloaded without using a browser.

Dale

International users should try our URL based mobi index eBook that allows direct download of eBooks. I suspect it will work. A similar thing could be designed for feeds so they could be downloaded without using a browser.

Dale

I already tried that. It doesn't work. It's not allowed at least in Spain, but I suspect it should be the same to all Europe.

I already tried that. It doesn't work. It's not allowed at least in Spain, but I suspect it should be the same to all Europe.

Interesting, so they have disabled URL access, not just the browser. Thanks for testing.

Dale

whenever I try to add a feed I get this message:

Cannot open or parse this URL.

what does that mean?

thank you

To answer my own post from 10-30, I found that several feeds I tried began with "feed" not "http". When I tried to add the feed I got the "cannot open or parse" error message.
My SOLUTION: Substituting http for feed did the trick.