NewsFire Organization

Many of you who read the blog probably use RSS Feeds to subscribe to the content. For those of you who have Macs, I recommend NewsFire for all your RSS feed needs. I’m not going to go into detail why, but it’s easy to use, small, lightweight, and just works well. If you don’t like NewsFire though, there are more options, such as NetNewsWire, Vienna, NewsLife, or even Safari’s built in one. But, as I use NewsFire, I have some things about it that I want to share.

Folders
If you have a lot of feeds like I do (If I like the blog, I bookmark it and add it to NewsFire), and while some people may get rid of feeds that aren’t updated anymore, I don’t. For a couple reasons: With folders, I don’t see the feeds, and for blogs which often go on un-scedualed hiatuses (such as my own), I give the benefit of the doubt to the blogger. But, not only does it keep my from having to keep me from deleting feeds all the time, it cleans up NewsFire and allows lots of feeds to be in there no problem.

Smart Folders
Along with folders, smart folders are another handy ability in NewsFire. Some people use more, such as the ones seen here like “Submit to Digg”, but I just use a flagged one. I often come upon digg stories that I imagine would be long, or posts on blogs that are interesting but I don’t have the time to read at that point. I flag them (command-L), then read them later.

Clusters
Whether you choose to cluster groups or smart feeds, clustering comes in handy. As I like the look of clustered groups better (instead of the bubble, the background is blue), I cluster my groups together and have my smart feeds at the bottom.

Those are some of the tips I find most useful in NewsFire, and I hope you like them. If you have any more suggestions, leave a comment.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 and is filed under Apple, Internet, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.