[LINK] Straw Poll Results: Dedicated/Integrated S/W

[Sylvano]

Linkers, 

The results for the Straw Poll on 
Dedicated or Integrated software.

*** drum roll ***

Design
------
An off-the-cuff questionnaire delivered
to a sample of convenience (ie Link list)
with an unknown response rate. 

Basic checks for multiple submissions and 
other dodginess.

Number of responses: 34 

Respondent profile
------------------
The five female respondents didn't really start 
engaging the poll until the weekend, suggesting 
they don't skyve of at work as much as we men 
folk, and most respondents were middle-aged. 

We tend have multiple internet access devices and 
skew to the portable kind of device. 

Mac OS X pips it in as the main OS, with Windows 
second and Linx/GNU only just behind, which must 
be an indication of all those writers and journalists 
on Link.

Almost 60% are of respondents are very happy and 
proud of their software setup, and 36% take a pragmatic 
kind of "it works" approach.  The pragmatists skew to 
being a little older and are more inclined to use
windows and IE with integrated RSS, but use a separate
email client. Our corporate soldiers who need to speak
the common business language?

(Sounds like a group horoscope reading, hey...)

Software: Dedicated or Integrated?
----------------------------------
Firefox is by far and away the browser of choice (79%) 

Everyone uses email (eh hem...) and only one quarter 
use their browser for emailing.

RSS is not yet a part of all our lives, with three 
quarters or respondents using it, and half of those 
that do not use RSS also express a lack of desire 
to ever use it.

Younger folk (<40) have many more devices connecting to
the internet, truly favour the portable device and at a 
punt look to be Windows/Linux dual booters. They all use 
firefox for browsing and two thirds use if for email and 
half use it RSS.

The link to the results, where you can do your own filter
analysis:
 http://www.gnomon.com.au/cgi/svy/survey.pl?sc=rssmailweb

As for me, I am male 40-64 using firefox for browsing and 
RSS live book marks. I mainly use a Linux/GNU box under 
with Kmail as my email (I know...) I occassionally use the 
macBook at home - when it's free - to load up and maintain 
the iPhone. I don't bother with RSS on the iPhone. My job 
kindly provides an XP loaded laptop, where I use firefox
with live bookmarks, Outlook and Microsoft office.

Summary of list discussion points
=================================
In addition to the general comment made about Open Source 
RSS readers, having "bugs, like clobbering my subscription 
URLs when hotel access points served redirects to captive 
portals," there were various other RSS thingies mentioned 
and discussed.

The following gives the comments against those thingies 
mentioned and a parenthesesed guess/count of how many 
linkers mentioned it, to give some sense of the RSS playing 
field. They're in no particular order.

Original posters of the information will be forgiving of 
me doing a slapdash aggregation of postings, when they 
provide corrections and other feedback ;-)

LifeRea(2) 
-> doesn't have adblock and noscript plugins

Bloglines(1) 
-> started crashing all the time

iceweasel(1)
-> has adblock and noscript plugins.

Google Reader(1)

safari rss(2)
-> vulnerability issues - won't go back even when fixed

Apple Mail(1)

Icedove(thunderbird)(1)
-> manual cut and paste the URL into "News&Blogs"

netnewswire and newsgator (3)
-> on both the home mac and the iPhone
-> went through a phase of being clunky and difficult to 
   organise
-> iPhone version allows you to have a subset of feeds 
   listed at newsgator on the device
-> control the feeds that are visible on the iPhone
-> All feeds are visible from the Mac

Vienna(1)
-> renders content in a multitude of ways
-> flexible enough to give me what I like to see.
-> no need for a web browser for RSS links

RSS Menu(1)
-> only lists the headlines
-> pops up a menu and invokes firefox to actually read 
   the feed

Sage (1)
-> firefox extension

Brief(1)
-> firefox plugin
-> better than the livebookmark feeds
-> provides title and full article options at a click 
   per article
-> can set the refresh time
-> has a bookmarking feature

firefox(2)
-> inbuilt feed reader
-> only lists titles
        

Finally
=======

Also, while looking about the 'net I came across any
number of RSS comparison articles but I thought I share
this one link.  

It may not be the most accurate or up to date 
resource around, but I like this kind of approach. 

It's a comparison chart for RSS aggregators, to 
which one can contribute and improve the info, 
if we one feels compelled.
 http://www.aggcompare.com/

It was created by a fellow called John Tokash, whose 
blog is at:
 http://blog.tokash.org/

and he also provides a recent (Jan09) comparison chart 
of five twitter apps for iPhone:
 http://www.tokash.org/iphone/iphonetwitterapps.html

Sylvano

Gnomon Publishing
http://www.gnomon.com.au/