I still read Hacker News. This week I found Rediscovering the Small Web there. The post itself is something I can relate to. And then on the HN thread, I found Fraidycat.
Fraidycat is a small RSS/Atom reader with steroids. As an old Japanese internet geek, it reminds me WWWC and antennas. Those are pre-RSS, internet update “checkers”. Antennas are also working as a blogroll before blogging. Its history is fascinating and I’d write more about that, but not this time.
Now I’m trying Fraidycat on Firefox. I like it so far.
- It is designed to be not too fast. I can read (or skip) posts by grasping the titles first. I can let its cralwer to check some feeds less frequently.
- By HTML scraping, it works as a Twitter client and supports some popular websites that have no RSS/Atom feeds.
- All sites only have 2 lines, no matter how frequently people update. There is no “Twitterstorm” problem.
- The small sparklines, the cat, and the colors. It has some “why the lucky stiff” feeling.
I’ve been using Feedly after Google Reader’s shutdown. Before that, I was using livedoor Reader and Bloglines. I may switch from Feedly to Fraidycat.
2021-01-30
Source: posts/2020/fraidycat.md