Is RSS feed reading on a handheld worthless?

[Bob Russell]

There are many programs available these days for reading RSS feeds on a handheld. And there are many different ways that I can see doing that. In my opinion, all but web clipping solutions are worthless. But I know that there are many people that love mobile RSS feed reading, so I'm sure there will be some differing opinions, which is a good thing. We all see things from a different perspective, and if there are useful ways to use mobile RSS readers I think we would all love to hear more about it.

With all that in mind, let's take a quick look at what seem like the various approaches. This is not meant in any way to be a "how-to" description or a comparison of readers, but more of a philosophical look at the different approaches to mobile RSS feed reading.... plus my thoughts on why most of them are not worth the bother.

1) Web clipping base on RSS feeds [e.g. Sunrise]

This is actually the one way of reading RSS feeds that I like!

You can define a feed in Sunrise is to give an RSS feed instead of a URL. Sunrise pops out a mobile Plucker-formatted version of the feed information that you load onto your device. Very similar to iSiloX, but you use a different reader, you have the ability to do RSS clipping, and with Sunrise you have an amazing amount of flexibility when it comes to controlling what content gets extracted.

2) Web content similar to or based on RSS feeds [E.g. AvantGo]

Another way to get RSS content is to extract it from a standard web clipping tool. AvantGo content is a bit like this, but it's not necesssarily coming from RSS feeds. There are others out there also, but content providers might be a little touchy about some of them. There's that tug of war between those that consider it to be a very effective publicity tool that drives traffic to the site, and those that take the view that it's taking advantage of them by creating unauthorized use of their content. Personally, I think the name of the game for most web sites is first of all a mission to accomplish something, and secondly to drive traffic. In my opinion, financial and personal and corporate benefits all seem to come from those things. What is most important to the people running various sites, and what drives them to put in long hours, varies a lot. You see some people passionate for their content and the visitor community, and any revenue is just a pleasant bonus or a way to pay expenses. Other people with web sites are focused on bringing in dollars and it's the only reason they do it. Either way, traffic is the name of the game for success or failure outside of the original purpose of putting the content out there. Even if your goals are not monetary, you want to make a difference to your readers and to as broad an audience as you can. And oddly enough, corporate sites are often not the most revenue oriented. At least not in terms of web-specific revenues. Many corporate sites are simply an extension of PR, sales, customer service, etc.

At any rate, this is not a good general solution, and even sites like AvantGo are only barely adequate, and really don't solve the general RSS feed reading issue.

Update: I should have also included MobileRSS in this discussion. It's a really nifty free web site that has been around a long time, and lets you create a custom account and subscribe to RSS feeds. Then it provides you with a personal link that has titles, summaries, and text for the RSS content. It's all in a nice mobile web form, so it's easy to view or to grab with any web clipping tool. While I don't currently use this approach, it's a slick way to get RSS content on your pda.

3) RSS reader software [I dare not single out an example!]

Here's where it gets really interesting. Mostly because of two factors. First of all, some devices are connected to the internet and some only have connectivity for synching. Secondly, some RSS content is fairly complete and other content is abbreviated and looks more like a teaser than an article.

You would think that dedicated RSS feed reader software would be the ideal way to read RSS feeds. Maybe it is... it has been a while since I have tried RSS software for Palm or PPC, so I don't speak with authority on the quality or features of RSS readers. But for me, it just wasn't worth the trouble. And it's even more uninspiring when not connected to the internet.

For one thing, I can be so much more efficient at the desktop that mobile RSS was really just a waste of my time and the interfaces I tried were frustrating more than helping me. It didn't last on my device more than a day or so. If you are using RSS feeds it probably is because you have a lot of them you want to scan very efficiently. That sounds to me like a desktop job, not a handheld task.

But even more important were the two factors I mentioned above... connectivity and teaser feeds.

So even if I did get an RSS feed, without connectivity, then it wasn't up to date. For sites without a lot of updates, or with daily content appearing mostly in the early morning (like a newspaper) it is not so much a problem. But for great sites like Palm Addict or Slashdot that have so much frequently updated content I actually want to read, I don't see any other reasonable option than to just visit them frequently throughout the day on my PC.

One problem with most collections of RSS feeds is that they accumulate fast. I don't really want to be reading old feeds. And the whole point of RSS feed reading is to very quickly and efficiently skim through the feeds and pick out the best ones for a quick look. That's just so much easier for me on the desktop. And if the feeds are stale, that is annoying.

But I suppose that's not the biggest issue anyway. After all, if they are constantly updated you could fall into the trap of never-ending feed reading!

Much more important is the other problem - if I'm not connected (or even if I'm connected with a slow connection) then I read the RSS feed and all I get is a bite size teaser when I wanted a hearty meal. I am constantly frustrated with any story that I'm interested in because I only get a portion. And it becomes either hard or impossible to get the rest of the story. I read just enough to get interested and then to make me realize that I can't read what I really want to see now, because I have to go back to being an old-fashioned web site visitor. If I'm not connected, I can't do it. If I am connected, it's still probably not a simple thing and many sites are a pain to navigate on a handheld. If you are just after a few sites, no big deal. But if you are RSS feed reading, you want to hit many sites quick and easy. That's still not the most effective thing to be doing on a handheld when you are trying to get through a bunch of feeds fast.

Bad stories from feeds are, of course, no problem. You don't want the rest of the story anyway! But the good stories are the only reason I'm reading RSS feeds in the first place, and those are the ones I can't read. I am left wondering what's the point?

And back to my original premise, unless you're doing some sophisticated form of web clipping via something like Sunrise, why bother at all? Just wait until you get home and do your RSS feed reading at your desk.

[BasilC]

I fully agree with Bob about RSS readers on PDAs. I use iSiloX and iSilo to read an RSS feed from a news analysis and comment website, Open Democracy (the link to the feed is here . I'm intrigued by what Bob says:

You can define a feed in Sunrise is to give an RSS feed instead of a URL. Sunrise pops out a mobile Plucker-formatted version of the feed information that you load onto your device. Very similar to iSiloX, but you use a different reader, you have the ability to do RSS clipping, and with Sunrise you have an amazing amount of flexibility when it comes to controlling what content gets extracted.

Does this mean that using Sunrise I could cut out all the links that appear on the sides of the page on my PC but at the top of the page on my PDA, and just go straight to the meat of each article? That's something that in theory you can do with HandStory, but doing it is far too complicated for a non-programmer like me.

[volwrath]

I recommend bloglines if one has internet access on their handheld. Mobile bloglines works great, and no matter what computer you go to you have the latest feeds waiting on you. Very efficient. Bloglines is arguably the website I most traverse

[Laurens]

I agree with Bob that feed reading on a PDA can be tedious. "Management" tasks like these are much easier to do on a desktop.

Shameless plug: Sunrise XP will have Bloglines web service integration in a future release. What this means is that you can use Bloglines to manage your feeds and then download any unread articles using Sunrise XP to read them on you handheld.

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by BasilC

Does this mean that using Sunrise I could cut out all the links that appear on the sides of the page on my PC but at the top of the page on my PDA, and just go straight to the meat of each article? That's something that in theory you can do with HandStory, but doing it is far too complicated for a non-programmer like me.

Sunrise can rewrite links on-the-fly, making it possible to go straight to the PDA-friendly version (usually the "printer-friendly" version) of a page.

Taking the feed you mentioned as an example, it can rewrite
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates...articleId=3233
to
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article...articleId=3233

Link rewriting filters are easy to write, provided you have some knowledge of regular expressions.

Link rewriting does not work for every site, though. Some sites require JavaScript to access the printer-friendly version, or sometimes there is no way to rewrite the link because the story IDs do not match.

I would hate to be the decenting voice on my first post to your site. (I read the RSS feed regularly on my palm

I read feeds using QuickNews on my treo 650. I have the software set up to download feeds every 4 hours, I have about 30-40 feeds that I skim through daily.

I have the reader set up to download just before I get out of bed. When I get up and have coffee in hand I go through the feeds that interest me, Mobile Read included.

As for your points on generating traffic, I read this post in my feed this morning and was enticed to click the link and follow through to this post and then comment. In the PR community there is alot of debate about full and partial feeds in terms of measurement. Readers no longer have to come to the site to see all of the content, and there could be an appearance of less traffic at the site even though the same readers are getting the content, just in a different way.

I agree that there are problems with headlines or "teaser" feeds rather than fully published articles. I would suggest that this is a content provider problem rather than a mobile device problem. However, some of the sites that do offer "teaser" feeds do entice me to click through. On the treo, I don't have much of a problem getting access to news stories through blazer.

One last thing that maybe should be included in this discussion are the new Web 2.0 like solutions that are coming out. I use a custom google homepage on both of my desktops and my PDA. This allows me direct contact with all of my top RSS feeds on all computers, and is a convienient portal to the information that matters most to me. I hope that this develops in the mobile space, as the big players adopt these new technologies.

Just my $0.02.

[Bob Russell]

Welcome to MobileRead Nathon and thanks for the comments. We are always happy to hear thoughtful and polite opposing views.

As a matter of fact, you are definitely not alone. I'm glad it's a good solution for you. I guess I'd have to say I'm a bit envious of those that have figured out the RSS feed thing so it works well for them on their handheld. Many people do seem to be very happy reading their RSS feeds with programs like Quicknews. One of these days I might even be one of them. But for me personally so far, it just hasn't been a very pleasant experience.

I agree also that the teaser feeds are certainly a problem due to content provider choices. But the trouble is that it is a mainstream technique and mobile device users face the biggest impact because the click-through to the original site is slower and more painful (depending on the site, the browser capabilities and the connection speeds). Even worse if you are not connected at all.

That whole issue of who controls how content is handled, and how much it can be controlled has a lot to do with the usability and cost of content in the future. I have concerns that with future web technologies (maybe not even in Web2.0, but especially Web 3.0 and beyond), it won't be possible to find printer friendly versions of sites for mobile clipping. We may find in the future that you can't navigate directly to a printer friendly page, or even directly navigate to a particular page within a site at all. Web sites will have the technology eventually to control completely the navigation through their content and what's seen on the page.

For mobile users, when this happens it may be compensated for by more content tailored specifically for mobile viewing because mobile devices will become commonplace. But additional control on viewing may also bring more subscription-only mobile content as content providers are better able to control the way their content is viewed. And it may not even be at prices that most people would consider fair.

Many sites, like newspapers, will collect revenue for subscriptions to content once they have better control of how you can get to the content for free. Maybe the give a subset of articles for free or teaser paragraphs. Sort of like the ESPN insider subscription model. Sites will continue to try to figure out how to best provide newspaper or magazine content in mobile form as a subscription (probably in addition to any subscription to read at the desktop if possible), but right now there don't seem to be any nice standards for delivery, and many times they even require special software for a particular site. (Washington Times has been an example of that.) Plus, it's a case of buyer beware, so it's just not even worth pursuing for most people. In some cases, you don't find out limitations or what's required or what the costs are until you are well into the purchase process. But eventually, it will evolve into common standards for mobile usage, and you can be sure that will include mechanisms for controlling payment for access.

Will customers and readers push back hard enough to prevent all this content provider "iron hand" control from taking over content on the web, and especially for mobile devices? I don't know. Without the pushback, it could be bleak, but even sites like Google which you mentioned, are helping with the pushback by providing alternate sources of the information repackaged. But even that is being threatened by legal challenges, so who knows where this will all end up!

This is almost a philosophical issue in the news media. Is the intent of an RSS to direct people to the content or is it meant to BE the content? Many users would argue that this RSS should enable the reader to see the content own their terms. But as you say, the click through rates are less than that of a traditional web interface. (This is even worse on a mobile device as you have to hop on to the/a network to connect to the original content.) As a user, I see the benefits of RSS for the companies, as I am often am drawn in to the web site to follow up on content. Again measurement is a key element to demonstrate the true value of the media.

When I first found RSS, I was really excited about the possibilities on mobile platforms. Instead of trying to cram web pages onto a screen that is too small, I found that using an RSS feed makes it easier to present the information in a way that is conducive to reading on a small screen. (I often switch fonts depending on where I am, big font for vehicles etc, smaller font for when I am stationary.)

I am still waiting for an easy to use software solution that will present my content in a personal newspaper like manor, ideally in the order of interest. We'll have to wait for Jeff Hawkins to get his artificial intelligence sorted out.

Will customers and readers push back hard enough to prevent all this content provider "iron hand" control from taking over content on the web, and especially for mobile devices? I don't know. Without the pushback, it could be bleak, but even sites like Google which you mentioned, are helping with the pushback by providing alternate sources of the information repackaged. But even that is being threatened by legal challenges, so who knows where this will all end up!

I'm afraid this comes down to the "monetization" of the medium. If people start making money in advertising in feeds it will entice marketers to use the media more. (As banner ads have done for the web.) I believe the blogosphere will "push-back" to encourage companies and media outlets to use RSS creatively and effectly for their communication purposes. Right now it is a pretty niche group of folks that understand and use RSS to it's full advantage.

As for the Google law-suits in Europe, I don't think the sky is going to fall on us just yet. Restricting search engines to the extent that the news agencies are suggesting is absolutely absurd. As long as google directs people to the FULL content, and offers a summary they should be safe. (Disclamour: I'm not a lawyer, I just speaking from my gut feeling.)

Thanks for the interesting discussion. I enjoy your articles Bob, keep them coming.

[Dick Tracy]

Great discussion and thanks for the topic Bob.

I look forward to some sort of standards as I am getting quite fed up with not knowing what I'm getting until I'm well into the process (and this goes for more than RSS content or mobile reading; think cell phone contracts or just about any interconnectable consumer product).

Unfortunately I feel that monetization and advertising will interfere and make this a less than pleasant experience for everyone. But there will always be another niche group looking to make it better.

[Chaos]

Originally Posted by BobR

That whole issue of who controls how content is handled, and how much it can be controlled has a lot to do with the usability and cost of content in the future. I have concerns that with future web technologies (maybe not even in Web2.0, but especially Web 3.0 and beyond), it won't be possible to find printer friendly versions of sites for mobile clipping. We may find in the future that you can't navigate directly to a printer friendly page, or even directly navigate to a particular page within a site at all. Web sites will have the technology eventually to control completely the navigation through their content and what's seen on the page.

I'm completely against anyone controlling how any content is viewed. As long as whatever device one wants to use to view it can handle (or convert) the format the content is currently in, someone should be free to do what they want with the content (provided it doesn't break copyright laws, the content's licence, or similar concerns).

For example, if content is provided as aPDF, then as long as the way the user wishes to view the content can view PDFs, or convert from PDFs to another format, then they should be able to.

In other words, I think the only restriction on who-view-what-and-how should be technology barriers, such as the example I gave with converting formats from one to another.


And as a hint for anyone currently doing web design... CSS media types work wonders. No need for a separate "print" view. Just use the print media type, with a stylesheet that simplifies the colours, removes anything unnecessary (display: none !important; ), and perhaps streamlines the layout to be more suitable for a sheet of paper. Works in most browsers I've tested (I have not tested it in IE, however).

There's also a handheld media type, but I can't test what mobile browsers follow it or not. The only one I've tested, Netfront on a Clie, doesn't support it. So it's not a reliable way of doing mobile design, as far as I know.

[BasilC]

Originally Posted by Laurens

Sunrise can rewrite links on-the-fly, making it possible to go straight to the PDA-friendly version (usually the "printer-friendly" version) of a page.

Taking the feed you mentioned as an example, it can rewrite
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates...articleId=3233
to
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article...articleId=3233

Link rewriting filters are easy to write, provided you have some knowledge of regular expressions.

Sounds perfect, but I need talking through it a bit.

In Sunrise XP I presumably go to Link Filter and add a regular expression that will match all the links to the articles?

If a typical link to an article looks like this:

<link>http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=1&debateId=67&articleId=3239</link>
could I use articleId as a regular expression? Or is there more to it than that?

Then I select Rewrite Links Matching This Pattern?

And write somthing in the Rewrite box. But what exactly?

[Bob Russell]

This is a bit off topic to go into details about Sunrise in this thread, but interesting so maybe it should get it's own thread to continue that side of the discussion.

In the meantime, maybe this will answer the question about link rewrites?... https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...7395#post17252

[BasilC]

Originally Posted by BobR

This is a bit off topic to go into details about Sunrise in this thread, but interesting so maybe it should get it's own thread to continue that side of the discussion.

In the meantime, maybe this will answer the question about link rewrites?... https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...7395#post17252

Bob, You're quite right, apologies. I've started a new thread asking for advice on how to do this, I'm afraid the earlier post was too advanced for my poor old brain.

[YesWAP]

If you have cost effective mobile web access, I personally believe the way to go is a mobile web based agregator. Two good ones are Feedalot and Bloglines Mobile. I wrote about them on my blog in this article; http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=37 with a couple of updates in http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=43 and http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=60. I keep up with 60+ feeds on a mobile phone with a smaller screen than most PDA's during my 2 hour (round trip) rail commute using Bloglines Mobile and Feedalot. The nice thing about both of these agregators is that they have a web version and a mobile version which stay in sync with each other in terms of what feeds you are subscribed too and what items you have and haven't read.

[sangahm]

You know, I have to agree on using RSS on my Tungsten T3. I have loaded up several readers over the years, but always came back with the same result -- the concept just doesn't make sense unless you have a constant connection, or Treo type quick dial.

I use Sunrise/Plucker combo since when an article looks good, I want to read it right away, not when I get home or at the nearest wifi hotspot I can find.

I think the idea is good, but unless you are lucky enough to have a Treo, it will be a dissappointment.

-S