For years I’d try to “get into” RSS, but it never really stuck. I couldn’t let go of the habit of compulsively loading my most-read blogs and websites; by the time I would review my RSS it was all old news.
The iPhone finally turned me into a regular RSS reader. Feeds — stripped of superfluous graphics, and quickly downloaded en masse — make for great reading material on the train.
I use NetNewsWire for the iPhone. Adding feeds via the iPhone is clunky, though: it’s all done through a web interface at NewsGator.com, which is hardly optimized for handhelds (in fact, it’s even anti-iPhone; the interface requires drag-n-drop and right-clicks). NewsGator does have a handy javascript “bookmarklet” (designed to be added to a desktop browser tab bar for speedy subscriptions), but they don’t provide instructions for adding this to your iPhone Safari bookmarks. I figured out how to do it by adapting the instructions for the InstaPaper bookmarklet.
1. Click this link from your iPhone.
2. Add a bookmark to this page (by tapping the + icon at the bottom of your screen). Name the bookmark “+ subscribe to RSS” or something.
3. Click the “book” icon to bring up your list of bookmarks, and edit the new bookmark.
4. Delete everything before javascript:location… then tap return
You’re done. Back up to your browser, find a web site featuring an RSS feed (here’s one! here’s another!), open your bookmarks and tap “+ subscribe to RSS”. The first time you do this, you’ll need to log in to your NewsGator account, but after that you’ll go directly to the interface for subscribing.
