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RssReaders posts

Filed under: News, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services

NewsAlloy goes down; New beginning or bitter end?

NewsAlloy, who made our recent list of RSS readers, has experienced a crippling blow due to expansive growth.

"This hard days finally came to us, News Alloy reached high capacity of users and feeds and it can't handle them with existing hardware and hosting," said lead developer Volodymyr Danylyuk in an email informing users of the downtime and rough road ahead.

"News Alloy is running due to the enthusiasts who wanted something more than regular services driven by Google, Yahoo!, Newsgator, Bloglines with billions behind and dollar driven development teams. "

A message on the NewsAlloy website says they've filled a disk, and are working to recover.

NewsAlloy is openly asking for help from interested users and developers, and as a service, NewsAlloy faces two choices: Become limited access and invitation only, after shutting off accounts that have been inactive for the last 21 days, sell, or take on investment capital.

With such a large choice of RSS aggregation apps out there, you have to expect that we'll see consolidation and attrition over time. It's not cheap to run a first class web service, business models are still not well defined. It remains to be seen who the victors will be, but the competition is certainly fierce.

Filed under: Text, Utilities, Productivity, Web services

You don't use RSS? Why not?

No RSSContinuing on our obsession with RSS today, comment 87 from James on my RSS Readers: Sound Off! post got me thinking. If anyone out there does not use RSS, why not? What don't you like about RSS, or what makes you not want to use RSS? Living in a very saturated tech world myself and being an IT administrator, I use RSS as a part of daily life, and don't really understand why you wouldn't use it (especially in my job), but what do you think? If you don't use it, why not? I have always wondered, and know that I am not going to get all over your case about it either, I am just curious. Since I am not a cat, I figure it is safe to wonder. I've heard that the majority of our readers do not use RSS, and I realize that I am a geek, not a normal person (kinda wish I was normal sometimes), so here's your chance to enlighten the binary brain of a techie. Consider this a "10 things I hate about you" aimed at RSS.

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Text, Utilities, News, Productivity, Web services, Social Software

RSS readers: guilty pleasures

RSS guilty pleasuresNow that we know what RSS newsreader you like, loathe, and can't live without, inquiring minds want to know what you like to read with your favorite reader. Tell us your "guilty pleasure" feed; the one you would feel embarrassed to reveal. Is it the celebrity gossip site, the one hundred and one most popular mustard flavors, or the latest in automobile bra fashion? Please keep it clean, as this blog is read by younger readers as well (my kid brother included). Tell us what your guilty pleasure is, and remember that we are doing this to get in touch which that chronic downloader in all of us. Don't worry, we won't tell - you can trust us here at Download Squad. This is the part of Downloaders Anonymous where you can tell us what's on your feed list and get it off your chest. We're listening, so spill the beans! What color does RSS turn when it is embarrassed? Bright orange perhaps?

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Blogging, Productivity, Web services, Browser Tips

Great Roundup of online feed readers

Techcrunch is on fire. They recently had Frank Gruber from Somewhat Frank do a guest post tackling the The State of Online Feed Readers. The roundup of feed readers is very well researched, written and contains hundreds of interesting comments. Due to the vastly differing feature sets of each feed reader, there was no best online feed reader chosen; in fact, they're not even ranked. There is a chart comparing the various features of each, and good descriptions of the strengths and weaknesses of each reader, including a relative performance rating. Good food for thought if you're considering switching to a different online reader.

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