Needing an interesting reading fix.

April 21, 2011 11:20 AM

Please help with RSS/Atom feed suggestions that are both interesting and easily read, in full, via Google Reader's mobile version.

The key here is not just any page that can be read in Reader, but something that is really interesting. Any topic (except gaming and smart phone garbage) will do for me. I just like learning about new and interesting things and don't want a lot of graphics. I prefer words.

That said, I do not have a smart phone, so my cell phone browser stinks. Rather than bookmarking dozens of sites (the bookmarking feature in the browser also stinks) I'd like to subscribe to feeds using Google Reader.

There is one serious problem that arises here. Most sites format their feeds with a few lines of text then give you a link to their site, in which case most of those either have bad formatting or they have ads and pictures and all kinds of other things that my browser cannot handle.

Two primary examples of the formatting are Wikipedia's "article of the day" and Arts & Letters Daily (which I found here, btw).

Sure you can RSS both but again you must click a link, then the link sends you not to the mobile version of the page, but to the full web version which, to be frank, sucks.

This is why it is essential that the full article is viewable in Google Reader and preferably without pictures.

Right now I only have a couple that are usable and I hope that some of you metamites have some suggestions for me.

Thanks in advance!

posted by magnoliasouth to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Blogs
http://youarenotsosmart.com/feed/ - interesting, but rarely updated
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/IWillTeachYouToBeRich - financial Advice
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Rss.xml?author=259 - Dan Savage (NSFW, generally speaking)
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry.feed/ - Scott Adams, creator of dilbert

Overheard Stuff / Customer / Clients
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ClientsFromHell
http://notalwaysright.com/feed
http://www.overheardintheoffice.com/index.xml
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/index.xml
http://www.overheardeverywhere.com/index.xml

Other
http://feeds.feedburner.com/AskMetafilter (so meta)
posted by pyro979 at 11:49 AM on April 21, 2011

I am completely in the same boat. I use a Blackberry, which has a sucky web browser. My criteria are identical to yours: Give me something interesting to read, with plain text formatting.

The problem with mobile Google Reader is that, as far as I can tell, it ALWAYS first takes you to a page with one-line snippets. That just seems to be the way it works. Then, if you click a link, it takes you to the feed item. Depending then on the specific feed, this will be the full item, or a truncated version.

So I don't find it very useful for interest reading, because you still have to click through and load each item individually. To me, it's mostly useful for alerts-type stuff; for example, RSS feeds showing the results of craigslist searches.

I do have a couple of normal mobile (i.e., non-RSS) pages that I find tolerable. I can give you those if you like.

- aj
posted by Alaska Jack at 12:49 PM on April 21, 2011

oh also, something else that might help. Your web browser might have a setting that says "don't download images" or "download images only on request" or something like that.
posted by Alaska Jack at 1:00 PM on April 21, 2011

@ Alaska Jack, I'd love to have those! I didn't realize that about Google Reader. Some appear to work fine though. I wonder what the difference is.

Also as a side note, I miss living in Alaska. I used to live in North Pole. Best years of my life!
posted by magnoliasouth at 1:07 PM on April 21, 2011

OK, here's what I've got. It's not a lot, but like I said, I'm in the same boat as you. I hope some of this is useful.

NEW YORK TIMES RIVER: Long stream of what's happening now
http://scripting.com/rivers/nytimes/

NEW YORK TIMES MOBILE
http://mobile.nytimes.com

NATIONAL REVIEW'S THE CORNER: Conservatives discuss current events.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/print/

GOOGLE NEWS: Pretty good snapshot of current events
http://www.google.com/m/news

PROFOOTBALLTALK: Hugely popular NFL analysis
http://m.nbcsports.com/s/3030/Home?pageNum=0&view=all

WIKIPEDIA
http://mobile.wikipedia.org

ENGADGET: Gadgetry and technology
http://m.engadget.com


I also have http://www.techmeme.com/m, but for some reason it's not working for me now.

More generally, for site www.xyz.com, try things like

mobile.xyz.com
m.xyz.com
www.xyz.com/mobile
www.xyz.com/m
www.xyz.com/print

and so on.

- aj
posted by Alaska Jack at 2:00 PM on April 21, 2011

Futility Closet (does sometimes have pictures, but mostly text)
posted by anaelith at 2:15 PM on April 21, 2011

Have you tried Full Text RSS on your abridged feeds? It works beautifully in most cases, though I tried Arts and Letters just in case and no luck there.
posted by ella wren at 6:07 PM on April 21, 2011