so apparently, “Really Simple Syndication” stands for RSS, which is one of the names I really like. I use it to keep myself connected with people I care about. It has a mixture of almost all my interests which include artists, designers, writers and programmers, and a few publications. It shows me only a few things when they post: title, date and a link.

I have started to use it more than any social media feeds.

RSS, the tech behind it, had its moments. One I have heard about is Google Reader, launched in 2005 around the blogging era.

As it happens with many Google products, it sadly didn’t survive the wave of at-the-time social media such as Twitter & Facebook. On March 2013, it was unceremoniously shut down, buried in an update post. This left behind a pretty loyal fanbase that eventually moved to other alternatives.

I wanted an rss reader for me to show all the links from my favorite people. I scoured most of the options, but didn’t like the feel of them, which basically means either I didn’t like the design or it ate up huge amounts of RAM.

If I am gonna spend my whole day using it, I want it to be a cozy corner of the room and not a huge monster that gargles my RAM to ultimately show me a few links.

Fraidycat by Kicks Condor, is the one I landed on. It supports almost everything, just about anything from YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Mastodon and of course RSS. It allows me to put each person in a tab based on their importance to me.

The first tab is always Real-time, followed by Frequent, Occasional. I only needed these three to sort all the people and publications. I really like its presentation style and the usage of colors. It gives me the indie app feeling that I’m always craving for.

Fraidycat is my daily driver. It even provides a browser extension to add links by a single click. It conveniently changes its icon the moment it finds an rss feed to follow. As much as my heart goes with the project, it hasn’t received any update since 2020. I really hope the creator has found their calling and is living a good life.

Search Continues

Well then, I put on my detective hat and continue scouring the internet and going through all the links and recommendations. Ultimately, most of them weren’t good enough to follow in the steps of Fraidycat. Then at last, I found the Rad Reader by Alex.

It is a tiny app (6 MB!) that is electron-free and has 10+ themes. All the feeds are saved in a local file named subscriptions.opml. All themes are stored in themes.toml, which you can edit to include your own theme. Read the manual for more info.

Grab your own copy for $7.50. It is a one-time payment for a lifetime license with no subscriptions. Find me a better deal than this.

Alex has done an amazing job in creating this lovely gem. It feels like Fraidycat’s spiritual successor. The goal is to sell 350 copies and then open source it, which is even crazier. It is 200 copies away from reaching the goal, so if you like it, consider grabbing your own copy.

There are only a handful of software I can count on my fingers that gives me that fuzzy feeling in my stomach. Rad is indeed one of them.

While we’re closing, definitely check these out:

• Unsung - unsung.aresluna.org
• James - writing
• Episodes - Interviews
• Jisu - website for websites