Create a personal newspaper for the Sony Reader with xFruits + rss2book

neilm2 · 12-03-2006, 08:03 PM

If you're using rss2book, it's pretty easy to create your own personal newspaper for the Sony Reader with a feed aggregator like xFruits.

I went to xfruits.com and made a single combo feed of philly.com local news, Christian Science Monitor world news, a Weather.com philadelphia forecast, a topix.net feed on the New England Patriots and a Dapper feed I made of the Sony Connect Top 10 ebooks. Rss2book does the rest making a pdf (with table of contents) and synching it every day to my Sony Reader.

Here's the xfruits feed I created...

http://xfruits.com/neilm2/?id=11065

And here's a PDF rss2book created from the feed...

rss2book - mydailypaper.pdf (130.1 KB)

I did this as a proof of concept - and it's a little rough - but it might grow into something I use everyday.

What do you folks think, does the Reader have a future as a newspaper?

tcv · 12-03-2006, 09:21 PM

I think your last question is valid: Yes, I think it _could_ do it, but I think it's gotta get better at displaying such content. At least if one thinks that newspapers need more than just text. (Maybe they don't...)

In any case, your example doesn't really grab me too much. Not that I don't think it's a worthy effort, it's just that it really displays to me why I don't want to read RSS feeds on the Reader. Each time I see something I want more info on, I have to put down the Reader and go to the computer. At that point I'm thinking, well, just fire up NetNewsReader and read the rest of the feeds.

neilm2 · 12-03-2006, 09:46 PM

TCV, you make a good point on the news-scan nature of the example I posted. Most rss feeds are skimpy on actual content in the summaries. Rss2book gets around that by going off and fetching the actual stories if you set it up right. (you can do similar things with Dapper.)

Here's an example using Rss2book of just the BBC World News with full stories...

Hadrien · 12-04-2006, 01:27 AM

Nice example.
That's exactly what the third part of FeedBooks will be doing, you'll be able to create a custom newspaper using different feeds and it'll build it for you. Later on, I'll also add some other possibilities, like generating sudokus or including your mails in such a newspaper.
Using LaTeX, the newspaper will have general table of contents + a specific one for each feed, making the whole thing quite easy to use on the reader (table of contents is needed since skipping pages, ain't all that on the prs 500).
I'll also add an OPML link, to export the list of feeds for a specific e-newspaper, and make these PDFs easy to share using tags to find them or similar stuff on the website.

tcv · 12-04-2006, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neilm2

Here's an example using Rss2book of just the BBC World News with full stories...

Very nice example!

CedFran · 08-14-2008, 08:51 PM

I own a Sony Reader. I am quite new to the technology. I would like to subscribe to RSS feeds so that I may download newspapers to the device. I do not have a good or basic understanding of what RSS is and how to use it

pilotbob · 08-15-2008, 03:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CedFran

I own a Sony Reader. I am quite new to the technology. I would like to subscribe to RSS feeds so that I may download newspapers to the device. I do not have a good or basic understanding of what RSS is and how to use it

Your best bet is to download calibre. It has the ability to pull down news from web sites and RSS feeds and has quite a few "recipies" pre-built in.

You can find the software here: http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/

BOb

Hadrien · 08-15-2008, 03:20 PM

Or you can use Feedbooks, and the ePub output: http://www.feedbooks.com/news

Try News Stand too: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/newsstand

djmiller · 03-10-2009, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hadrien

...
Try News Stand too: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/newsstand

Hadrien: Any chance of a non-Windows version of News Stand? (i.e Linux and/or Mac)

Mos52 · 04-03-2009, 12:57 PM

So I noticed feedbooks only gives an abstract of articles for the newspapers. Specifically, I was looking at the WallStreet journal. Is there anyway to get the entire paper downloaded from feedbook? Or do I have to get the rss2book program discussed above?

12-03-2006, 09:21 PM	#2
tcv Addict Posts: 330 Karma: 596 Join Date: Oct 2006	I think your last question is valid: Yes, I think it _could_ do it, but I think it's gotta get better at displaying such content. At least if one thinks that newspapers need more than just text. (Maybe they don't...) In any case, your example doesn't really grab me too much. Not that I don't think it's a worthy effort, it's just that it really displays to me why I don't want to read RSS feeds on the Reader. Each time I see something I want more info on, I have to put down the Reader and go to the computer. At that point I'm thinking, well, just fire up NetNewsReader and read the rest of the feeds. Last edited by tcv; 12-04-2006 at 01:09 PM.

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12-04-2006, 01:27 AM	#4
Hadrien Feedbooks.com Co-Founder Posts: 2,263 Karma: 145123 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Paris, France Device: Sony PRS-t-1/350/300/500/505/600/700, Nexus S, iPad	Nice example. That's exactly what the third part of FeedBooks will be doing, you'll be able to create a custom newspaper using different feeds and it'll build it for you. Later on, I'll also add some other possibilities, like generating sudokus or including your mails in such a newspaper. Using LaTeX, the newspaper will have general table of contents + a specific one for each feed, making the whole thing quite easy to use on the reader (table of contents is needed since skipping pages, ain't all that on the prs 500). I'll also add an OPML link, to export the list of feeds for a specific e-newspaper, and make these PDFs easy to share using tags to find them or similar stuff on the website.

08-14-2008, 08:51 PM	#6
CedFran Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Sony	I own a Sony Reader. I am quite new to the technology. I would like to subscribe to RSS feeds so that I may download newspapers to the device. I do not have a good or basic understanding of what RSS is and how to use it

08-15-2008, 03:20 PM	#8
Hadrien Feedbooks.com Co-Founder Posts: 2,263 Karma: 145123 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Paris, France Device: Sony PRS-t-1/350/300/500/505/600/700, Nexus S, iPad	Or you can use Feedbooks, and the ePub output: http://www.feedbooks.com/news Try News Stand too: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/newsstand

04-03-2009, 12:57 PM	#10
Mos52 Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2009 Device: Sony Reader PRS505	So I noticed feedbooks only gives an abstract of articles for the newspapers. Specifically, I was looking at the WallStreet journal. Is there anyway to get the entire paper downloaded from feedbook? Or do I have to get the rss2book program discussed above?

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