Sometimes I spend more time tinkering with things to try to get to the ideal solution than using the ones I currently have. Last night I was digging into the “optimal” way to consume information (e.g., blog posts, articles, news) and also how to retain the interesting parts of any of that or save the link for another point in time. I feel like there is not a 100% solution I have seen and maybe that is where my expectations are to high or maybe what I am looking for is not what everyone else needs. I don’t mind using multiple tools to get the job done but sometimes trying to get the information from one to the next is more friction than it is worth and that is what I am trying to change. However, this is my current cobbled together parts that I am using (I might even be missing something):

  • FreshRSS - This is really where anything I would like to subscribe to comes in and I will triage it from here (or using Reeder on iOS). It is the current firehose of information that I have cobbled even newsletters to come in through various other means. In fact, synced up Feedland feeds in there which has been interesting (more on that later). When using just the Web version, I was able to create a quick button next to the feed item that I can send it directly to Wallabag (see below) without having to click multiple items to get it to share to it behind the scenes. I wish I could do more of these little changes as it might help my overall simplification.
  • Wallabag - Really just a self-hosted read-it-later service that I like the idea of and probably won’t remove it yet but it lacks some of the other features that I would really like in a read-it-later service or place to archive information. My biggest issue after being pointed to Matter is that the voice-to-text on this is garbage right now. If that could be improved I might try to send more stuff in this direction as it does have a really good link with my FreshRSS instance. Their iOS app isn’t great either but I can overlook some of that if other things would work better and be more fluid.
  • Shaarli - Originally this was just a place to save links as a reference for later. I used it for a little while to share links I found out to Micro.blog but the one frustration was that I couldn’t easily add a blurb or anything about it. There is a notes field but that doesn’t translate over to get sucked into my Micro.blog. However, on the plus side, I can quickly add things to this app via the Web or iOS so I want to still use it but it has but one purpose.
  • Kill the Newsletter! - This is what I use to get newsletters into FreshRSS. I know some other apps have this built-in that I even use (i.e., Matter) but since ideally, I want everything to come into FreshRSS this was the best workaround I have found. I only have a handful that I use this for today as my preference would be to have an RSS feed from the site I subscribed to as most newsletters do today. However, this is a nice workaround for those that don’t have that option. With that said some of the newsletters that come through don’t look super pretty but to me it is nice to get it out of my Inbox.
  • Matter - This is a little bit newer in my arsenal of information consumption apps. I actually really like it as it does read articles really well and also offers the highlighting of text and stuff to pull out later. I think the only grip I have is that at this point it is clunky in the grand scheme of my process. I get it my process should change. In order for me to get information in here it seems like too many clicks from where my information comes in (e.g., FreshRSS). Matter does now support RSS but I don’t really want a firehose of information coming into this app as it doesn’t appear to be designed to triage information.
  • Feedland - Maybe this doesn’t exactly fit in this write-up but it is something I have been using over the past two weeks since I noticed Andrew Canion posted about it. I will be honest I am not 100% sure how to use it as I probably still need to tinker with it a little more but I do like that I have a bunch of news/posts I am following that I probably would have spent the time to find. That might be one of the benefits I am seeing since one of the feeds I have in there is the most popular feed or articles of all Feedland users. Probably more to come on this at another time if I keep using it and figure it out more.

The final gripe is random but it fits in the realm of RSS feeds and mostly how I consume information. For those of you that only send excerpts in your RSS please stop! Just let the whole post be in the RSS feed so everyone can have a great reading experience and not have to go to to your site to read the rest. I have been using FiveFilters Full-Text RSS. I was using their self-hosted one for a few years now but I think it needs updating and I need to purchase a copy. I am not opposed but not sure I really need it and might just unsubscribe from those that go down the excerpt route vs allowing the RSS feed the full text 😉.

Note this was written in Craft and in a spider web of connected processes arrived at my Micro.blog site. Hopefully!