Thanks to Asheesh I am now a happy user of Tiny Tiny RSS. It has fully replaced my use of Google Reader. I feel a little bit cleaner/freer now. But don’t ask about my use of Google’s IMAP and Jabber servers. They are on the long term TODO list.
Anyways, what is Tiny Tiny RSS? It is a web-based Feed Reader, a la Google Reader. However, it is Open Source (GPL) and you (or a group of friends) run your own instance on your own server.
Yes, that means you will need some server space (or some web-accessible computer) and the ability to install software.
So far, my review of it includes:
- Good interface - clean and straight forward. It is Google Reader-esque also. Good if you like Google Reader, bad if you don’t.
- Really customizable (ie: lots of settings). However, don’t worry; the defaults are usually pretty good.
- Does one thing that Google Reader doesn’t, and I have been missing since I used Liferea: not to display the same article if it is in multiple feeds. This happens, for instance, if you subscribe to more than one planet (like planet.ubuntu and planet.debian and planet.gnome); you will get the same post from Jono twice since he is on Ubuntu and GNOME and the same post from Mako twice as he is on Debian and Ubuntu. Those are only two examples of the many. This is a big plus for me.
- Open Source, of course!
- Has a “publish article” feature which is what Google terms “Share.” It produces an RSS feed that you can give people or put on your blog/homepage of articles which you find interesting and want to publish/share with others. I am using it on my blog right now (only one shared article at this time).
- The bad thing I encountered at first: I was a bit confused when setting it up on how to get it to behave how I wanted; All unread articles, oldest first, every feed. Seems pretty easy, but I guess I was just reading the settings wrong at first. Either way, I have it set how I want now.
If you are curious to try this before you install it check out the live demo.
Is anyone else out there using Tiny Tiny RSS? What are your opinions?
10 Comments
Thanks for sharing this… I hadn’t seen it and it fits nicely with a post I had just written.
What’s so wrong with google?
@Lucian - In principle, nothing. It just want to have more control over my personal data and using a self-hosted (or shared between friends hosted) solution which is just as good if not better than Google Reader just seems better.
To more directly answer your question; see my thoughts about the Franklin Street Statement: http://blog.grossmeier.net/2008/07/15/are-you-autonomous/
I’ve been using ttrss for years - It’s a really great reader, and I definitely enjoy the Freedom from Google that it provides me.
One of my favorite features of ttrss is that it keeps getting new features. The developer seems to be constantly improving it. :-)
Yes, I use TTRSS since several years now, and only since I discovered it I can really use RSS feeds from several locations transparently. Google Reader (and just about any Google application) is out of the question for me, as one of the key points in using FLOSS is (at least for me) not to depend on one company after all.
Cool! But it does lack one of the most useful features of google reader: you don’t need an url to subscribe. Feeds are always quickly found by only knowing the name of the site.
@Wouter - the RSS button in the location bar of firefox isn’t easy enough? ;)
Hello. I’ve been using the online ttrss service hosted by the author (you can find it here : http://online.tt-rss.org/tt-rss.php ), instead of netvibes. I didn’t quite like google’s ui in fact. The main problem with google is that you don’t know what they really do with data (the kind of feeds you read…). This service (limited amount ou accounts) is great : You can use ttrss without hosting it yourself
I got myself a eeePC over the summer, and I use it quite a bit away from home. The thing is great, but there is very little hard drive space, and I really don’t want to have a lot of writes to the solid state hdd. Because of this I ssh into my home computer for large files, for ALL of my music (thank you aMpache!), for a calendar on my drupal site, and various other fun little things.
I am a news/rss junkie.
I needed a way to get to my feeds from my little eee without cashing all of those feeds in any way. THANKS!! This tt-rss is exactly what I was looking for! I am pretty big on hosting as much as possible myself, so google-reader= big no no. Ok, I use gmail, but my main mail is self hosted, my calendar is self hosted, my cheesy blog is self hosted (get the idea?). Call it what you will, I think it makes great sense to keep all of my data in my own hands. Right? Anyway….
All I need now is a good way to stream video files to myself from my home computer, like an ampache for video … anyone??
Thanks greg
I hadn’t heard about TT-RSS until I saw your dent, or post or whatever, but Thanks! Have been wanting to actually get back into reading feeds and setting this up got me back into it
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[...] Update: Thanks to Greg Grossmeier, I see another examples of a free network service - Tiny Tiny RSS is an RSS Reader like Google Reader, but it is open source and self-hosted. Check out Greg’s post about the site. [...]
[...] Update: Thanks to Greg Grossmeier, I see another examples of a free network service - Tiny Tiny RSS is an RSS Reader like Google Reader, but it is open source and self-hosted. Check out Greg’s post about the site. [...]