RSS reader list update

Continuing to update this RSS Reader list.

RSS is a relic of the sort-of-free, mostly-unregimented Web, which existed prior to the period when critic Ed Halter began shifting his attention to social media corrals, bingeing on serial TV, and playing with his toybox of apps (he used the first person plural in making this confession).

RSS allows you to stay informed via a host of unconventional sources without having Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin looking over your shoulder, sucking off your energy. It would be the province of old net hippies except it also has its uses for business types who trade in up-to-date information. RSS gives you full-text posts, which is superior to, say, twitter's little snippets, and RSS feeds don't come larded with the "suggestions" and sponsored posts that clog the chutes of those social media corrals.

An example of the business side of RSS is what happened to Bloglines, my reader of choice from the mid-'00s. Something called Merchant Circle acquired it, and then Merchant Circle "partnered" with something called Netvibes. Users had their emailed logins transferred to Netvibes, and for a time the Netvibes "dashboard intelligence" software continued to include our lists of Bloglines feed URLs. Last week those stopped working, but it was possible to manually import those feed URLs (I had the same list on Feedly) and continue as a Netvibes "free" user. For now.

A French company, Dassault Systèmes, in turn owns Netvibes. According to the Netvibes CEO, his company "combine[s] with Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform [to] provide customers with real-time information critical to their innovation process. The time between consumer reaction and business action is the key to providing the best experience possible."