Getting your crack delivered at home: A weeaboo’s guide to RSS

Anime fans are a pretty addiction-prone bunch. One torrent leads to another, one figure leads to another, and most infamously of all, one Ninja Scroll DVD leads to an entire house overrun with plastic discs in fancy box sets (formerly plastic cassettes in fancy box sets), until eventually you find yourself thinking hey, that Strike Witches shit is pretty good!

That insatiable appetite follows us onto the web, where we read, write, and comment near-religiously on forums and blog posts. And I’m surprised to hear about addicts who don’t know about RSS, that most magical of technologies that helps me keep a mainline of anime-internets hooked up at all times.

Here’s a brief presentation that I hope you’ll find edutaining.

Here’s the video on step 3 that I mentioned, about using Google Reader to follow comments. This might seem ridiculous to some people, but I find it to be a helpful process.

Is there any other rad and/or stupidly convoluted stuff that anyone else does using RSS feeds (other than helping Danny Choo increase his PageRank)?

24 Comments »

I use RSS to force my web serial upon my anime blog readers. Click my name to see :)

lolikitsune loved us on Nov 7 @ 12:16 pm and it was good.

I just found out like a month ago about RSS feeds, makes things so easy

and FeedReader is win~

Nazarielle loved us on Nov 7 @ 12:28 pm and it was good.

It’s known as Life H4X, BTW. Also, RSS, you are GOD.

Omisyth loved us on Nov 7 @ 12:46 pm and it was good.

There’s a cool way to access your rss quicker by using google gears. It basically lets you create lite desktop clients of webapps that also functions offline.

I find using google chrome to do this is the best way.

If you don’t have it yet, download and install chrome from google.com/chrome

Using chrome, navigate to the google reader page or whatever gears supported webapp you want.

Once you’re there, click on the icon next to the search bar and click on “Create application shortcuts”.

That’s it. BTW chrome is awesome but currently only available to windows. All that’s missing is extensions, but that will come later ;3.

ix loved us on Nov 7 @ 2:00 pm and it was good.

I have never used RSS because I only read the blogs on my blogroll and they are all right there for me. Would it save me time to use RSS? Yes. Am I too OCD to do it? Very yes.

digitalboy loved us on Nov 7 @ 5:39 pm and it was good.

RSS is one of those things that seems to be stupid and useless until you actually start using it.

Kabitzin loved us on Nov 7 @ 6:20 pm and it was good.

To keep track of my feeds, I only use Anime Nano, the only good anime blog aggregator ever in the history of the universe.

Baka-Raptor loved us on Nov 7 @ 6:33 pm and it was good.

All over the internet, R.S.S!

Cute presentation, I enjoyed it. I learned the wonders of RSS a good time ago and have been using Google Reader; but do you have any suggestions for an even more passive RSS feedreader? Some program that I can minimize to my tray and have it scream “YOU’VE GOT FLAMES” or something at me when the feeds update?

I still find that spamming one site (maybe two, if you count Anime Nano) for aniblog updates is too unproductive of me. XD

CCY loved us on Nov 7 @ 7:51 pm and it was good.

I don’t use RSS even though it makes so much easier. I don’t know why, I just visit AnimeNano and look for blogs through there. Awesome video though :D

blissmo loved us on Nov 7 @ 8:42 pm and it was good.

You’re right, this is as ridiculous as teaching a Linux snob how to ssh.
Though I like Google and understand you’re showing people a simple way to read feeds, putting all your feeds online is a tad too trusting. Personally, I prefer Thunderbird.
(Anyone who’s already too familiar with the email client shouldn’t have to read any further, it’s just ridiculous)
I won’t get into the technical details, but Thunderbird is a one-click wonder once you’ve set it up properly. You’ll be able to read all your feeds, emails (from all of your ~~fake~~ accounts) without having to be online at that time, open up a browser, log in or whatever, you’ll also get to choose whether to see the message body as plain text, simple or original HTML (why the hell do I sometimes need to load a whole fucking page to read some lines of text?). It also has information manager (via add-ons), privacy and security-related features, and add-ons just like Firefox… Using Thunderbird is so addictive that I find myself having to turn it off every time, otherwise I’d spend all my day surfing the web.
Now I do all my email sending/receiving via Thunderbird. I may not be a big fan of Firefox but Thunderbird is so powerful that I don’t know how I had survived without it. And it only gets better .

frankeinstein loved us on Nov 7 @ 10:56 pm and it was good.

“but do you have any suggestions for an even more passive RSS feedreader”

http://www.feedreader.com/

You need to really configure it so it actually updates shit in a timely manner (Manage Feeds -> Update period, change to 1-2 minutes), but other than that it’s really nice. Minimizes to tray, turns orange when there’s new shit (sometimes gives a lil pop up and noise, but not always for some reason), it’s pretty easy to use

Nazarielle loved us on Nov 8 @ 2:18 am and it was good.

RSS FTW! Same thoughts on RSS as Kabitzin’s, never thought I’d find it indispensable like I do now. Another great thing about RSS feeds is that you’re able to view the posts even when the blog is down! Feed crazy Ryan has been doing other cool stuff with his feeds, I find the note-taking really cool, but something I’m still not doing atm due to laziness lol.

usagijen loved us on Nov 8 @ 9:43 am and it was good.

RSS readers are for elitists. :p

bakaneko loved us on Nov 9 @ 1:51 am and it was good.

BRAVO!!!! It’s Magical! Spectacular! *sniffs*

Rakuen loved us on Nov 10 @ 6:17 am and it was good.

@lolikitsune - almost got me there.

@Omisyth - be careful worshiping at the altar of RSS, for the plight of his people is a very short attention span.

@ix - I use a Mac primarily, but I have tried out Chrome and I have to say it’s pretty neat. I’m hoping it comes out for Mac soon.

@digitalboy - if you ever feel the need to switch your OCD to ADD, a big ol’ list of feeds is just about the best way to go.

@Kabitzin - too true, and then you find you can’t deal without it.

@Baka-Raptor, blissmo - yes, Nano, that site that tempts everyone to write really stupidly provocative blog headlines in the hopes that some stray clicks will come their way.

@CCY - I can’t find it now, but there is in fact a really neat toolbar that sits on the bottom of your (Windows) desktop and alerts you at specific times or when you have new posts. Will have to get back to you on that.

@frankeinstein - I used to read my RSS through Thunderbird as well and I can attest that it was cool. But I found that when I switched to Tbird to read my email I was getting distracted by blog posts and never got anything done.

@Nazarielle - speaking of never getting anything done… 1-2 minutes? Wow!

@usagijen - yeah aloe dream has some interesting uses, but over here at OH! we aren’t trying to let people off our site :D

@bakaneko - watch out, I’m college-educated and I read books too! We’ve lost all touch with the common man.

@Rakuen - I’ll assume you mean my video just because I want to believe that :)

otou-san loved us on Nov 10 @ 11:30 am and it was good.

@otou-san: what? How did I “almost get you there” ? If you click my name you get to my anime blog home page, which uses RSS (SimpleRSS) to display the latest items from Dreams of the Quill’s Night Switch feed—in other words, my web serial.

Don’t treat me like shit.

lolikitsune loved us on Nov 10 @ 8:17 pm and it was good.

Almost got me = almost got me to click your name.

Just joshin with you son, what’s with the tsun-tsun?

otou-san loved us on Nov 10 @ 9:32 pm and it was good.

I’m feeling hurt and abandoned. That’s what.

lolikitsune loved us on Nov 10 @ 10:33 pm and it was good.

damn I thought a reader was the norm…guess not. Google reader is really convenient..I just keep adding blogs whenever I see them, so in the morning or w/e there’ll be 40 or so new posts but I’ll end up reading 2-4 :(

lelangir loved us on Nov 10 @ 11:00 pm and it was good.

Server logs at Ani-nouto show quite a number of people using Liferea… but most (maybe all) of them are Linux users. It is quite ironic since Lars, the main developer of Liferea is firmly Windows based.

Author loved us on Nov 11 @ 12:36 am and it was good.

Hahahahaha, love the vid ^o^/ ^o^_ ^o^/ ^o^_

char loved us on Nov 12 @ 5:57 pm and it was good.

True. I did learn something today.

unscentedbox loved us on Nov 16 @ 9:01 pm and it was good.

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Oi, Hayaku!