Snackr – renewing my faith in RSS

Nov 13, 2008 by Dan Taylor    2 Comments    Posted under: Technology

Zoinks!  Look at all these unread articles that are simply piling up in my RSS feed reader.  How the heck am I going to read all of these?  You know…I wish there was just something that could make a minimal footprint and still give me all the tasty RSS feed that I love.  Meh…this sucks and I feel like I’m wasting my time with this overloaded RSS feed reader.  Minimize, never open again.

Does any of this sound even remotely familiar?  Well stop using my voice as your narrative.   But seriously, when I first became aware of what RSS was/is and how to use it, I’ll admit I went a bit overboard with the subscriptions.  After a while, it got to the point where I’d read 5 or 6 feeds a day, and watch the unread items notification pile up.  At one point I finally got fed up with my self-inflicted guilt, and just abandoned RSS altogether, and just went directly to the site to catch up.  The problem with this is distractions, bills to pay, random acts of WoW, etc.

Enter stage right (left, top or bottom if you prefer): Snackr.  Thanks to Ritchie over at Datenschmutz, my faith in RSS has been restored.  I stopped by his laboratory the other day and happened to notice this slick little news ticker running up the left side of his second monitor.  A closer inspection revealed that the news was actually coming from a variety of sites.  “You don’t know Snackr?” says Ritchie.  A short 20-minute subway ride home, and I’m all over Snackr.

Snackr is missing an e.  Yes, snackr is missing an e, but hey, flickr gets away with it, and I think this tiny little app might have the same appeal to me as the world’s best photo sharing site, as I believe Snackr to be the worlds best RSS feed reader.  The concept is simple enough: Snackr is an RSS ticker that pulls random articles from RSS feeds you select (i.e. news you want to read).  You can then select where you’d like the ticker to be displayed.  I personally have it running up the left side of my screen, as I slightly offset all windows to the right anyway, it made perfect sense.

I’ll admit that the system is not perfect, it’s a heckuva lot more intuitive than logging into a feed reader and sitting there idly and reading.  Instead of having to stay on top of the feeds 2-3-4 times a day, I’ve not got news scrolling along in the background.  Not to mention that I’ve now got any breaking news right in front of my eyes as it happens.   Once I see a title that grabs me, it’s a simple click to open the feed, and depending on the source, either read the whole article or just an excerpt.  Snackr always provides as link at the bottom of the window to the entire story, should you want to comment, blog about it, or view images.

The preferences panel couldn’t be easier to navigate, with options for scroll speed, keep snackr in front of other windows (something I don’t need as I set the ticker off to the left so that it’s always in view), don’t show items older than (insert number here) days old (I personally set it to 1 day, as I want the most recent news), automatically check for updates, and position of the ticker.

Adding an RSS feed to Snackr hasn’t been exactly easy, as my default RSS reader is set to AppleMail, and to be honest, I haven’t really figured out how to change it.  Instead, I normally copy/past the RSS feed address into Snackr.  Removal of a feed is just as easy.  In the preferences panel all your feeds are listed.  Simply click on the feed and then select Remove.  Presto.  Gone.

Another drawback is that Snackr won’t automatically remove a feed from the ticker that you’ve already viewed.  It will turn the text a slightly darker shade of grey, but I’d love to see the feed removed and replaced with another article from the feed.

I’ve been testing Snackr for the past week, and as the title states, Snackr has renewed my faith (and use of) RSS feeds.  I’ve found myself glancing over at it while programs load, emails download, or during flight times in WoW.  Truly an awesome utility that I recommend without question.

Bonus: Snackr allows import/export of RSS feeds in OPML format.  If you’re installing snackr, you can simply import my faves right on top of yours.  If there are a few you don’t like…feel free to delete away.

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