At first glance, Toluu looks like a stripped down version of the RSS aggregator Fav.or.it, which we reviewed earlier, but it's not. They both serve the same purpose - recommending new feeds based on your current subscriptions. The difference lies in how each web site gets this done. To use Fav.or.it, you have to abandon your current RSS reader in order to benefit from their recommendations. On the other hand, Toluu works with your RSS reader, to make these recommendations.

Getting started couldn't be easier. Import the OPML file from your RSS reader and it instantly matches your feeds with other members who have similar taste. You can then discover and read new feeds directly in Toluu before deciding to subscribe.

Using the provided bookmarklet, you can add new feeds to Toluu - so you can continue to benefit from updated recommendations - and subscribe in your preferred reader simultaneously. Supported readers include Google Reader, My AOL and Netvibes, amongst others. You can also connect Toluu directly to Twitter, sending an update every time you add a new feed.

Toluu is currently in private beta and invites seemed to be going out pretty slowly, and while it's certainly worth the wait, we have invites for the first 100 readers to leave a comment below.

Update: We've got another 25 invites to give away. First come, first served!

Because it's an AIR app, Snackr is cross-platform and sports a look that won't feel out of place on your OS. Ticker speed and position on screen are adjustable, and you can force the ticker on top of your other windows if it suits you. Snackr supports OPML files, so it's very easy to populate with the feeds of your choice. It also minimizes to a tiny tab when you want to put it away for a while, and shows a preview of each story you click on, instead of going directly to your browser. Snackr doesn't interrupt what you're doing unless you want it to.

All in all, this is one of the most useful, best-designed AIR apps we've seen yet. It's essential for heavy RSS users, or anyone who wants to stay on top of breaking news. Don't ditch your full-featured feed reader, by any means, but do supplement it with Snackr if you're looking for a faster, more dynamic way to consume information.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

EDIT: The URL for the first link is fixed. It's Snackr.net, not .com. Thanks Ian, Jake and David!

Note to anyone developing an RSS reader: If you don't support OPML, we're not interested. While adding feeds for your favorite web sites one at a time might have sound like fun, once you've got more than 10 feeds, the charm of entering them by hand kind of wears off. And over the last few years, we've accumulated just a few more feeds than that. So when we first heard about new kid on the RSS reader block Shyftr a few months ago, we pretty much ignored the site. But now that Shyftr has added OPML support, we decided to upload our 465 feeds and take it for a spin.

What sets Shyftr apart from RSS readers like Google Reader or Bloglines is the service's social aspects. Users can leave comments on items they read, and those comments can be seen by any other Shyftr users who subscribe to the same feed. Shyftr got a bit of bad press last month when the company tried to add comments from the original article page to Shyftr, and eventually decided to remove this feature. The issue might not have been as controversial if comments left on Shyftr were automatically added to the original page, thus alleviating allegations that Shyftr was trying to move the discussion away from the blog itself and into the Shyftr community. But there are some technical challenges associated with doing that, not the least of which is that there are a number of different protocols that blogs use for posting comments.

Like any good social network, Shyftr lets you become "friends" with other users, view their profiles and activity, and invite friends who haven't already signed up for the free service.

One thing to note is that while Shyftr now has an OPML import feature, it's slow. It only takes a few moments to import a few hundred feeds. But it takes much, much longer to "process" those feeds. And if they don't process correctly they won't show up in your feed reader. So if you've got more than a few hundred feeds, you might want to hit the import button right before heading out for your lunch break. Maybe it'll be done by the time you get back. But if you leave the page during the process, you'll have to start all over again.

[via Louis Gray]

Life without feeds would be one of sifting through thousands of endless stories and visiting website after website for content. Thanks to RSS, our lives have been ever so simplified.

OPML has been the typical approach to combining all RSS feeds into a single file that can be exported and imported into any feed reader. Then along comes RSS Mixer. This online tool lets users combine all favorite feeds into one. The drawback to using this is that you cannot simply upload an OPML file, you have to add multiple feeds. But if you have a few feeds that you wanted to follow no matter where you are, like via a mobile device like an iPhone or a widget embedded in your iGoogle homepage, this is a cool way to go. Users start off by giving a title to their 'Mix', then adding feed URL's into the Mix. When RSS Mixer is complete, users get the option to link to the mix, create an Apple Dashboard widget, create a Web Widget, get an RSS feed for the combined feeds, and launch an iPhone version of the mix.

It's a pretty impressive way to easily mix up RSS feeds, and stay on top of them no matter where you are. Our only wish, give us the chance to upload an OPML file.

Feed reading might be a little time intensive for some busy bodies. Open an application or web location, read, and repeat. How about making it a little easier? Anothr is trying its best to speed feed reading up. We covered them back in October with the release of their RSS aggregator for Skype, and now they enter the market with a reader for users of Google Talk and Jabber clients.

To get Anothr up and running, add the contact name "anothr@gmail.com" to your friends list in Google Talk. The Anothr RSS alert bot will send you back an IM with links to manage and share subscriptions. You can enter website links, or upload OPML files to import sites and get the news ball rolling. However, this solution might only be good for a few important news feeds. I couldn't imagine getting bombarded with a feed update every 2 seconds.

If you are looking for a simple way to read your news feeds, this could be for you. It could be an annoying way to receive updates to your favorite news, but if you want to be notified immediately of updates, this is a great way.

Adobe released its first look at the newly re-branded myFeedz.com social news site on Friday. The website learns what users like and keeps up with interests in order to serve content. It all started when InterAKT launched their public beta last August, and sold to Adobe a month later. The service is now located deep-within Adobe's Labs, who have been on a web 2.0 kick lately. myFeedz is aimed at finding what's important for the user out there in the crazy overpopulated field of content feeds from the web.

myFeedz helps users keep track of and sift through the endless amounts of information and trends they are interested in, all the while offering relevant information as to their interests. Users begin by importing RSS feeds from favorite websites using OPML, dropping a list of keywords, browsing articles by tags, reading, writing, and rating articles. Articles can then be saved and archived for later reading, and RSS feeds can be exported for you topic of interest.

The site was extremely slow during my testing. Still being in the "lab" format, little issues can be expected. I just hope they get things sorted out fast; This seems like a great little tool!

Google Co-op is a service you may have heard a bit about, and may have simply overlooked... I know I did at first. The idea is that you can give it a list of sites that have information pertaining to a very specific subject, and create a little search engine based on only those sites, filtering out everything else.

At first this seems like a bit of a parlor trick, but it's actually a very powerful concept and one that can be exploited in a number of ways, like this: Why not use Google Co-op to create your own personal search engine that only searches sites that you have subscribed to in a feed reader?

Google Operating System offers the instructions, and they are blessedly short. Here they are, in essence:

1. Get a local OPML file containing your subscriptions
2. Create a new Google Co-op search engine, and use a bogus site or two when it asks for what sites to search
3. Go to the Advanced section of the Control Panel for the new search engine you've created and upload your OPML file
4. That's it. You might want to remove your bogus URL at this point.

Google Operating System also offers a number of ways to make it easy to access your new personalized blog search engine.

Marshall Kirkpatrick of TechCrunch notifies us of Grazr, a quick tool to browse your OPML files, no programming knowledge needed. I guess you could think of Grazr as a hierarchical exploded tree-menu explorer-type interface on some kind of weird custard that makes you say things like "dandy." For an example, check it out over at TechCrunch. Grazr, a sort of OPML browser makes RSS feeds pop and even plays video (like YouTube) and other media right in the browser. I love the slippery feel of the UI and the "folder meets DHTML" menu feeling of it. I give this little diddy a five star-monkey salute!

How many times have you emailed the "webmaster" at a site, only to never hear back? Most companies have a generic webmaster address (if they bother to list it), but that address may never see the real webmaster's inbox. Worse, said webmaster might not care that his pages aren't compatible with Opera... Still more common is when a doofus like me can't figure something out, emails the webmaster, and gets either a form letter or nothing in response. Well I just wanted to thank O'Reilly for apparently taking an interest in its users. See, I'd been missing Meerkat, O'Reilly's newsfeed, which was an aggregated feed of some great sites out there. They quit "broadcasting" Meerkat's feed last month. Luckily, they put the OPML file up, sort of, for mass consumption (the link opens a page of the XML, which you copy/paste into Notepad, then save as OPML). But something in the file prevented RSSOwl from using it. So I hit up Justin, the webmaster, using the email provided right there on the page. And guess what? A couple of email exchanges later, and Justin had fixed the OPML file so that it works in RSSOwl. Wow. That, folks, is customer service. Big shout out to Justin and the rest of the team at O'Reilly for doing a great job and actually caring about the user experience. Wish we saw more of that in the technosphere...

RSS bigwig Dave Winer has released a draft specification for OPLM 2.0, the second major milestone for the XML outline format. You can read the draft at OPML.org, and in his blog Winer has a podcast explaining "why the improvements in OPML 2.0 will help users." If you're into OPML, you can read the spec and then post your feedback at the OPML group on Yahoo!

I'm not sure why Apple doesn't put this directly in Safari. Then again, Apple's record on "standards" is a little spotty (isn't this true of nearly all the big companies?). But over on TUAW they mentioned a trick from MacOSXHints that'll allow you to export an OPML file of your RSS feeds out of Safari. Neat trick, and glad it's out there. I think this stuff is just starting to take off though, and all this OPML export/import stuff is great, but it reminds me a lot of tooling around the bookmarks files. There has to be a simpler way of keeping everything organized and synchronized.