I’ve been testing NewsAlloy, a free, feature rich and very fast Ajax reader (zero page refreshes). All power-user features are included - tagging, pinning, river of news and folder-based viewing, easy digg and del.icio.us submission, and good search capabilities. I also like the keyboard shortcuts.
If the speed holds during user ramp up (a big if as the site has only been up since around December 1, 2005), this could become a cult favorite. However, this is not for RSS newbies.
Pete Cashmore wrote about them right after launch in December.
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Looks like a very powerful RSS-Reader compared to all the others out there.
December 1, 2004? Isn’t it 2005?
Nader, thank for pointing out the typo. fixed.
did you see pc mac http://www.pcmag.com/article2/.....856,00.asp
the pioneer in the space for 411 is
http://www.411sms.com
There are so many online news readers now, they shouldn’t ask you for you to sign up. I’m serious, those 30 seconds are just too much. They should just save you user state in cookies and give you the opportunity to sign up if you like it.
Gabe, that’s a good point, and there is no reason to require a sign up to test basic functionality.
What about the common Lazy Registration approach?
“Accumulate bits of information about the user as they interact, with formal registration occurring later on”
http://ajaxpatterns.org/Lazy_Registration
Has anyone tried http://www.gregarius.net
It’s also an ajax news reader.
It suits my needs quite well
Should give it a try
I totally agree with Gabe - look at the way Netvibes creates a page for you without signup. This gets people hooked from the start.
Oh, and thanks for the link, Mike - appreciated.
This may be what I’ve been looking for since SearchFox closed down. Rojo just wasn’t for me. let the testing begin
You should also take a look at the new feed reader in Community Server (http://communityserver.org). It’s currently in beta 3, and the reader isn’t as feature full as newsalloy, but it’s pretty nice, and will only get better.
Anyways, just wanted to pass it along.
It’s cool, but I didn’t like having Google ads right in the middle of the action. It would have been ok if they were shoved down to the bottom of the page.
Also, OPML import didn’t work too terribly well. I have 142 feeds in NNW, and NewsAlloy only imported 83 of them. And it took about 5 minutes to do it. Though… Google Reader took about twice as long to do it. So I don’t know, maybe there’s just something really tough about OPML parsing that I’m not aware of yet.
In any case, I think I’m going to stick to my own self-written web aggregator and NNW.
I guess we can kiss the fast speed goodbye.. thanks Mike
Google reader is better. Though i use RSS Bandit
OK…………… Is it just me or is it REALLLLLLLY slow.
Hmm… I think my OPML file import killed the server… even reloading FF all I get is ‘Loading…’
I’ll bookmark this and check back, but if I can’t load my feeds it’s a non-starter…
RE Bob’s OPML import…
I did the same thing. Started with an OPML with 60, ended up with 12.
Then I tried to import the feed from my blog. It showed the feed in the preview section - images and all. Looked beautiful. Then I hit “subscribe” and it insisted that the feed was empty.
… but it had given me a preview of the feed!
The reader looked very nice .. excellent formatting.
Nice…I feel as if I’m changing my RSS reader everyday! I may have to agree with the “fast” label as well, however.
Actually…this reader is so awesome, I could give a shit about how fast it is. Thanks for the heads up.
5 minutes of “Loading” later, it is not enjoying importing my 300 feed Bloglines OPML file.
Maybe I should try again with something a little more sanely sized.
hmm took the 104 from greatnews (great desktop rss reader.. highly reccomended to seacrhfox refugees).. and stripped it down to 86.. and now its on tc its slow as anything (your famous now mike you get your own mini-slashdot effect).. maybe i’ll come back in a few months to this product
I apologize…the performance I had last night was superb. Today I can’t even get to the site.
300 feeds! Oh, so you are the one slowing it down =)
I liked http://www.bensinclair.com/art.....ng-bennews, but I don’t know if it will be released or what.
Guys,
sorry for slow down but what did you expected when 100 simultaneous users uploading their feeds at once ?
have you ever expected a webserver able to do this quickly ?
let the dust gets settled !
thank you for good or bad words - this will make newsaloy just stronger and better when i’m making issues of this invasion :))
I have been trying Xprssit at http://xprssit.com/main. I really like it - it’s got everything I need but it’s still beta and has a few bugs. I have looked briefly at NewsAlloy and it’s definitely worth a trial period.
I use NewsAlloy since I know it (few months) and it’s amazing.
Almost everyday new features.
Now it’s slow because techcrunch effect..
That means NewsAlloy will grow up.
Give they the chance.
Gabe (#4), awesome point, man. I think NewsAlloy is really great. I’ve been looking for a new reader for a while. Bloglines is too limiting for my needs. Man, it’s fuckin’ slow though. Ha, I think I read a joke above about it being TechCrunched. I hope that issue can be addressed ’cause if it normally doesn’t have speed issues this may be my new reader.
NewsAlloy = Dead Slow
Until this gets some major updates it is not even worth the time to sign up. I imported a small file of 22 feeds and it was all over. Gave up trying to connect again after 7er so min.
un saluto dall’Arcanave
I agree with Gabe and Pete. In fact, when Pete wrote about it, I passed over even giving it a try because I was annoyed I had to sign-up.
I had some pretty serious problems with it as well, the OPML import seemed to work okay, but I couldn’t reorganize the feeds (the move button didn’t work.) Also, possibly as a result of this post, the speed was far from lightning-fast.
If there was a paucity of online news readers, I’d probably stick it out and wait for them to iron the bugs out, but as things stand there’s too much viable competition out there. When a site like this goes live, it’s got to be ready to rock your world, because if it doesn’t it’ll take you 10 seconds to find another service with the same features.
That’s a good work, but there are still too much clicks to view an article and mark it as read….
I do prefer orijinn (orijinn.com), which has no ajax… but is fast as hell, and easy to use.
For example, something which could be idiotic, but clicking “mark site as read” marks all feed articles as read, and show next feed… So, one click to do it all
But of course, it’s not as much “poweruser” friendly !
Gabe, Michael, YodPod.com is an ajax-enabled RSS reader that doesn’t require registration. I developed it for me and some friends but all are welcome. Its still in very early development so please excuse the glitches.
Alesti.org is another simple online RSS reader that doesn’t require registration. Great for testing out feeds!
I tried every online feed reader out there and news alloy is the best so far. One of the worst is Google Reader in my opinion, it’s just too basic.
Agreed, Google Reader and online NewsGator both suck big time, there are just nothing in there! Even for complete dummy beginner…
The story with NewsAlloy is continuing - it’s seeking for investors and it will get ‘em, eventually! Have you seen Rojo acquisition recently? Rojo is simple enough (I mean features poor) comparing to NewsAlloy (although maybe Rojo is more stable). So, with clever features development and usability improvements for different types of online users, it can be rock solid web 2.0 app beating sectors leader…
oops, I mean sector leaders
Yes. its good.
straw is quite good too