RssReader

I have a lot of favorites stored in my Internet browser. I go through them looking for stuff that interests me. That's how they go to be favorites in the first place. As I went I visited a few sites that had nothing to grab my attention. I considered removing them from my favorites but, what if they had something tomorrow that really interested me?

This dilemma has been solved by the aggregate reader programs. These programs allow you to surf your favorite websites without having to actually surf the web. It is a pretty cool concept. I decided I would give it a try.

There are a number of people at work who use these. I spoke with half a dozen people and and got 10 recommendations. Some of my co-workers use multiple programs for this purpose. That is what I get working for a software company. (I am not a programmer, that is why I am asking people about it instead of telling you about my experiences with it for the last 20 years.)

After consulting a few people "in the know," I was no closer to a decision about which reader to use. I decided to let Google choose for me. I typed in "rss reader" and hit enter. 4 of the top 10 hits were for RssReader. One was for Google Reader, of course. Decision made. I downloaded and installed RssReader.

During the installation process it gave me the opportunity to choose some feeds. I chose a few nature feeds from National Geographic, Discovery and such. I also chose some news feeds. And a couple tech feeds. Once it finished installing and launched, it went out and started grabbing articles. In less than 2 minutes there were nearly 600 articles waiting for me to review.

I diligently spent the next couple hours going through my new feeds. I found I had made a few impulsive choices that weren't so good and deleted them. When I was done, I still had enough energy to go through a few of my favorites and add them as feeds.

At least, I thought I did. It said it was compatible with Atom feeds. I had site I almost always find interesting that has the little Atom icon displayed. I read the help files about how to add the feed and followed the instructions diligently. Still, i got the message it could not validate the feed. So I moved to another site with the Atom logo and tried it. Same result. Finally tired, I gave up and went to sleep.

Next day, I decided to give it another shot. 10 minutes in or so, my browser started opening on its own. Sometimes it opened to add ware sites, but sometimes to porn. Most of the time though, my firewall blocked the site. Great. I got a nice malware virus. Thanks Google, this was your recommendation. Fortunately, I have been the victim of malware before and I learned my lesson. I had a system restore point from the previous week.

RssReader...what piece of crap. Avoid it at all costs. Thinking back, none of my co-workers had recommended it.