On The RSS Reader Reader's Lament
@stuffisthings Farhad's system sounds like being trapped in an old school arcade game in which shit is frantically flying all over the place and you are constantly mashing buttons to deal with it before it overwhelms your humble little ship. Dislike.
2
On The RSS Reader Reader's Lament
@stuffisthings The Awl auto-refreshes for your convenience.
1
On The RSS Reader Reader's Lament
@IBentMyWookie RSS originally stood for something I can't remember, but has since been rebranded as "really simple syndication." It is essentially a file that organizes some or all of the content on a site and often metadata (tags, post dates and times, authors, etc.) into a format that be taken elsewhere and read/displayed/used. Often the widgets on the sidebars of people's personal blogs such as "recently liked" or "now reading" are powered by RSS. The main use for RSS however is to collect stuff from frequently updated websites in one place for personal reading. In most browsers, when you visit a blog or news site you'll see a little orange box with white quarter circles in your browser's address bar; click it and you'll see the RSS file.
Google Reader is/was the best way to organize a bunch of these. You give it the addresses from those little orange boxes from all your favorite sites, and then you can see from one place when all of them are updated and with what. Like most RSS readers, it somewhat resembled an email client, with a list if folders (tags in Google Reader's case) in the left column and the posts' subject lines running down the main column in reverse chronological order.
RSS/readers are maybe a little overkill for the average web user, who might check in on a half dozen sites once or twice a day before retreating to Facebook, but if you want to keep up with hundreds of sites multiple times a day (ie professional bloggers) it's the only way.
4
On Soon There Won't Be Anything Unpretentious Left
Wait, I thought bragging about how unfussy and "authentic" one is was the new pretension?
0
On I Want To Know What's Wrong With Being An Internet Troll
I went to read the linked post and was asked to stare at a static 300x250 American Airlines ad for 20 seconds before proceeding. Well played, Henry.
2
On Take A Minute To Watch The New Way We Make Web Headlines Now
The Best Headline Screed You'll Read Today
3
On The Final Nail In "Halleluljah"?
A minor squall, some major shit.
4
On Trolling v. Trawling
Much as the Supreme Court decided in the landmark LOL v. LULZ: "I know it when I see it."
4
On The "Political Press," AKA "People Paid To Lie On TV," Were Very Wrong
Technically they are Twitter embeds, but you are probably too proud to take a third hack at it.
0
On Half a Tweet! Gawker Headlines Max Out At 70 Characters Tomorrow
Looking at the list of truncated headlines, my first thought is "Go even shorter."