[HN Gopher] Show HN: I've Implemented a RSS Reader
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: I've Implemented a RSS Reader
        
       Author : StreamSphere
       Score  : 54 points
       Date   : 2024-01-02 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (play.google.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (play.google.com)
        
       | wccrawford wrote:
       | No data collection and no ads and no microtransactions? I'm a
       | little surprised to see that.
        
         | StreamSphere wrote:
         | Initially I coded this RSS reader for my personal use and
         | decided to put it on the store so that it wouldn't be just for
         | me. I find it more motivating
        
       | sphars wrote:
       | Looks great, and I like the simple, no-frills/IAPs model of this.
       | 
       | Any chance you could integrate with RSS aggregators, like
       | FreshRSS, miniflux, ttrss or any of the other self-hosted
       | aggregators? I use FreshRSS and I like having my feeds synced no
       | matter what device I view it on. The Android clients for
       | FreshRSS[0] are a little lacking IMO or a bit out of date so it'd
       | be great to see something new.
       | 
       | [0]: https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS#apis--native-apps
        
         | StreamSphere wrote:
         | To be honest, it's something I'm less familiar with and at the
         | moment I've mostly given priority to something local. I'll take
         | a closer look and see what the possibilities are.
        
         | 101008 wrote:
         | Hacking top comment: I remember FeedBurner was a wrapper around
         | your feed that provided stats (the famous button with the
         | counter was a lovely thing from the best times of internet). Is
         | there something similar now?
        
           | aaronax wrote:
           | Anyone could implement this. The User-Agent of the feed
           | request should include a subscriber count for each service
           | that is downloading your feed to provide to its users.
           | Examples: https://www.jefftk.com/p/looking-at-rss-user-agents
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | See also
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software)
           | 
           | Unfortunately there don't seem to be many planets anymore. My
           | YOShInOn RSS reader has a Tik-Tok like interface and trains a
           | machine learning model to learn my preferences. The typical
           | cycle I use it on is 2 days in which it might find 6000 feed
           | items, it shows me 300, and I might skim another 100 on
           | special screens that score high on certain models or that
           | fill in gaps.
           | 
           | It is subscribed to 110 feeds through SuperFeedr which costs
           | about 10 cents a feed per month that's affordable at my
           | scale. I'd like to be subscribed to 1500+ independent blogs
           | that post once a month or once a week but I can't afford to
           | do that with SuperFeedr so I think sometimes about
           | retrofitting the front end but really overpolling those
           | independent blogs 20-50x is for the birds.
           | 
           | People could post their items to ActivityPub but barring that
           | I really wish there were more Planets out there because it
           | would be simple and cost effective to subscribe to 1 Planet
           | that itself sucks in content from 50 blogs.
        
         | kohbo wrote:
         | This is exactly where I am with FreshRSS. Having it "installed"
         | as a web app is OK but not quite what I want.
        
           | smithza wrote:
           | On iOS install ReadKit which can interact with a very nice
           | interface to FreshRSS. I self-host FreshRSS and it works
           | perfectly, syncing with the server so when I go to the
           | computer, it is up-to-date with what I have opened. I do not
           | know if ReadKit is on Android.
        
             | wlesieutre wrote:
             | Reeder is another nice (iOS) client with FreshRSS support
             | https://www.reederapp.com/
        
               | plutokras wrote:
               | Reeder is the app I use the most. It does its job
               | perfectly and nothing more. I love it.
        
               | wlesieutre wrote:
               | And iCloud sync!
        
         | Valuables1920 wrote:
         | +1 FreshRSS integration would be awesome, I agree that Android
         | lacks good apps for this. I am using FreshRSS as a webapp at
         | the moment which is okayish but a nice looking app would be
         | much better.
        
           | nirav72 wrote:
           | I recently discovered CommaFeed and I am self-hosting it.
           | It's somewhat similar to Google Reader in look and feel.
           | 
           | https://github.com/Athou/commafeed
        
             | sphars wrote:
             | I've seen this one pop up recently as alternative to
             | FreshRSS. While not as many features as FreshRSS, I like
             | the direction CommaFeed is going. Have you tried FreshRSS
             | and if so, how it compares?
        
       | uneekname wrote:
       | I'm getting a 404 error at this URL
        
         | StreamSphere wrote:
         | Normally this is the address :
         | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niviva.rss...
         | 
         | StreamSphere - RSS Reader is the app name on the play store
        
       | verisimi wrote:
       | It looks good.. and I'm looking for a simple rss feed.
       | 
       | But I don't think it displays all the tags - eg I know some
       | entries in my subs reference a file that should be downloadable..
       | but there's no reference or visibility of that.
        
         | StreamSphere wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedbacks what tags are they missing?
        
           | verisimi wrote:
           | I think it's the enclosure tag
        
             | StreamSphere wrote:
             | The parser uses enclosures for images only. If you wish you
             | can give me more details so I can see why (url ...)
        
               | verisimi wrote:
               | From https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_enclosure
               | 
               | <enclosure url="http://example.com/file.mp3"
               | length="123456789" type="audio/mpeg" />
        
               | StreamSphere wrote:
               | This is normal, at the moment only images (jpg, gifs...)
               | are displayed in the feed. I've yet to add the ability to
               | read other formats, like mp3 here in future update
        
       | dvh wrote:
       | Adding URL is too difficult, I had to click 20x to add simple URL
       | of RSS feed. It should be like this: click on hamburger menu,
       | choose "add feed", paste url, done.
        
         | StreamSphere wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedback. In fact I hadn't worried about that
         | because I thought that adding sources isn't something frequent
         | even if it's a bit long at first and I thought that adding an
         | "add source" button in the hamburger menu would be annoying
         | since it wouldn't be used often.
        
           | ssivark wrote:
           | It's uncommon in "regular" usage, but has a much higher
           | likelihood in the workflow of new users trying out your app
           | :-)
        
             | StreamSphere wrote:
             | I understand the problem, I'll think of a solution to
             | facilitate this. I didn't notice as I know my application
             | too well.
        
       | SushiHippie wrote:
       | You should add "Show HN:" in front of the title, if you are the
       | creator
        
         | StreamSphere wrote:
         | Done
        
       | pauby wrote:
       | Is it open-source? I'm assuming not as I don't see a repository
       | URL on the Play store or here, but thought I'd ask.
        
         | StreamSphere wrote:
         | Not at the moment, but I'm hesitating. I've already started to
         | Open sourced the suggested sources in the app :
         | https://github.com/Martinviv/rss-sources . You can also ask me
         | for design details if you want ...
        
           | wahnfrieden wrote:
           | By country, not language?
        
             | StreamSphere wrote:
             | Yes, because later on, when I have topics in languages
             | other than English, I plan to allow users to have a
             | language filter that will display the topics and countries
             | that correspond to the selected language. But at the
             | moment, as I only have topics in English and news sources
             | by country, I've kept this structure
        
       | jp57 wrote:
       | Thoughts on pros and cons vs NetNewsWire?
        
         | latexr wrote:
         | NetNewsWire is exclusive for iOS and macOS. This app is
         | exclusive to Android. They don't overlap.
        
       | matznerd wrote:
       | Is anyone out there looking for an RSS style feed of their email?
       | In a sort of non-disruptive scrolling mechanism... possibly with
       | AI summary of the emails. This would not replace your inbox, but
       | allow you you to not have to go into your inbox until you want
       | to, but to be able to stay up to date with what is going on in
       | your email...?
        
         | reddalo wrote:
         | Hey.com has a similar function called "The Feed", but it's a
         | paid email service.
        
       | grigio wrote:
       | I prefere a selfhosted webapp like YARR
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | Which clients still have filters? I use ReadKit but the upgraded
       | version to modern Mac frameworks isn't yet as good as version 2
       | (which is no longer signed, unfortunately).
       | 
       | I don't blame the author in the slightest for the upgrade --
       | really, a rewrite it seems -- which has some enhancements over
       | v2, but it takes a while for something like that to reach parity
       | with the previous version.
        
       | graypegg wrote:
       | I would love to see some different concepts for RSS reader UI.
       | The left pane with a big list of feeds, and a vertical list of
       | articles does work but I think there's room to expand there.
       | 
       | A more passive newspaper-grid layout would be cool. Selectively
       | chosen headlines and images, tap to see full article. Each
       | personal "newspaper page" is static, it won't change after it's
       | been viewed, only new posts added to the bottom. Then you could
       | scroll back thru pages per-day.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-01-02 23:00 UTC)