June 1, 2007
Grazr Guided Melodies
RSS and OPML mostly remain a mystery to the masses. Sure, most media people are clued in now, but few get beyond clicking on the little orange box to subscribe to a feed in in their mail reader. I'm not going to go into a long Utopian rant about how RSS, XML, et al will change the world and how we relate to information... even though it is. Syndicated feeds, hyperfeeds really, are very powerful things. But so far, there hasn't been no carrier wave - no iPodesque catalyst to light the fire.
Grazr is a step in the right direction. Grazr is unique among OPML/RSS readers, and Grazr's default "slider" setting jettisons the mind-numbing newsreader format (and the underdefined Live Bookmark concept), in favor of a smooth, backward-and-forward glide through as many layers of feeds as necessary. There's in 'it' quality that Grazr brings to the syndication experience that's hard to define...but I'll try. I think the basic backward and forward slide effect adds a third dimension to the web of feeds and links that makes it more tangible - a bit like a book. Gah - that's the best I can do right now.
The effect isn't as noticable with run-of-the-mill news reading (Google Reader remains my favorite in that arena), as it is with more complex, syndicated data structures, like the Rhapsody online music service. Here's one of the root Rhapsody feeds (http://feeds.rhapsody.com/data.opml), first in Optimal, a PHP-based OPML viewer that's more traditionally hierarchical:
Pretty, but the limitations become clear pretty quickly. Now here's the same content in Grazr:
You can even switch to a more traditional "3-pane" view when its appropriate:
So why am I going on about all this? Well, this whole blog entry was basically the answer to why you want to drag one or more of these bookmarklets to your browser toolbar. I was getting frustrated that there was no Grazr subscription option in Firefox's default RSS style sheet, so I whipped these up to do the trick. If at any point you run into an RSS feel or the cryptic blank OPML page, just click Grazrize and voila, instant readability.
Each bookmarklet does the same thing, I just made different ones for a few of Grazr's style options.
Happy grazing. :-)
Grazrize (Noir)
Grazrize (Blanc)
Grazrize (Bleu)
Grazrize
Grazr is a step in the right direction. Grazr is unique among OPML/RSS readers, and Grazr's default "slider" setting jettisons the mind-numbing newsreader format (and the underdefined Live Bookmark concept), in favor of a smooth, backward-and-forward glide through as many layers of feeds as necessary. There's in 'it' quality that Grazr brings to the syndication experience that's hard to define...but I'll try. I think the basic backward and forward slide effect adds a third dimension to the web of feeds and links that makes it more tangible - a bit like a book. Gah - that's the best I can do right now.
The effect isn't as noticable with run-of-the-mill news reading (Google Reader remains my favorite in that arena), as it is with more complex, syndicated data structures, like the Rhapsody online music service. Here's one of the root Rhapsody feeds (http://feeds.rhapsody.com/data.opml), first in Optimal, a PHP-based OPML viewer that's more traditionally hierarchical:
Pretty, but the limitations become clear pretty quickly. Now here's the same content in Grazr:
You can even switch to a more traditional "3-pane" view when its appropriate:
So why am I going on about all this? Well, this whole blog entry was basically the answer to why you want to drag one or more of these bookmarklets to your browser toolbar. I was getting frustrated that there was no Grazr subscription option in Firefox's default RSS style sheet, so I whipped these up to do the trick. If at any point you run into an RSS feel or the cryptic blank OPML page, just click Grazrize and voila, instant readability.
Each bookmarklet does the same thing, I just made different ones for a few of Grazr's style options.
Happy grazing. :-)
Grazrize (Noir)
Grazrize (Blanc)
Grazrize (Bleu)
Grazrize
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