Everyone knows that RSS is a format specification used for message aggregation, with advantages such as higher reading efficiency, better reading experience, and the ability to take control.
This article will not introduce the various benefits of RSS and various types of readers, because there is already enough related information available on the internet. Here, I will introduce how to fully explore the value of using RSS, because its purpose has always been underestimated.
Readers#
Starting with the simplest, let's see how to subscribe to a blog using RSS.
Suppose you want to subscribe to the cutest blog in the world, Hi, DIYgod, and luckily it already provides the RSS feed for you. You just need to find an RSS reader that suits you.
Here are a few recommendations:
iOS and macOS platforms - Reeder
Android platform - Palabre and FeedMe
Open the reader, enter the link, and click subscribe.
Now we have learned the most basic usage of RSS.
Cloud Services#
At this point, you may encounter some problems.
You can only get updates if your computer or phone is always on. If the diligent DIYgod updates 100 articles in a day, and the output quantity of RSS is limited, when you open your computer after a day, the reader will only show you the latest few articles (of course, DIYgod is unlikely to update 100 articles in a day, this example is not very good).
Also, if you subscribe to DIYgod on both your phone and computer, when you finish reading on your computer, it will still show as unread on your phone. If you subscribe to a lot of content, this can be quite bad.
So we need a server to synchronize and refresh RSS content.
The most widely used ones are Feedly and Inoreader.
Although they are good, I recommend a self-hosted Tiny Tiny RSS with more features and higher flexibility.
Self-hosting not only makes the data more controllable, but it also has rich plugins to meet various needs, such as full-text content extraction, Fever API simulation, DOM manipulation, and traditional Chinese to simplified Chinese conversion. The readers mentioned above can be used with it.
RSSHub#
It seems nice, but there are too few websites that provide RSS feeds. The reason is understandable: RSS is not conducive to commercial activities such as advertising, data collection, and user retention for website owners.
Of course, we are not satisfied with this, so I initiated the RSSHub project. The principle of the project is simple: RSSHub requests the data from the source website that you want, and then outputs them in RSS format, making everything available in RSS.
After more than a year of active development by nearly 200 developers, RSSHub has supported nearly 600 types of data from over 300 websites, and these numbers are still growing rapidly.
Here are some of the routes I frequently use:
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Best Buy Rankings: Be cautious when subscribing, it has cost me quite a bit of money.
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Updates on various figurines of various waifus: Just buy them with your eyes closed.
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Weixiaowei and Maobing's Bilibili dynamics.
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DIYgod's followed video dynamics: No need to check the stupid Bilibili dynamics anymore.
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JFlaMusic's YouTube videos.
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Dcard forum: A super interesting Taiwanese forum, suitable for use with the traditional Chinese to simplified Chinese plugin in Tiny Tiny RSS.
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PlayStation Store free games for members: Never forget to claim free games again (although I won't play them even if I claim them).
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RSSHub has new routes.
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Himitsu's Twitter dynamics: NSFW.
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Best friend's Weibo: No more getting scolded for missing my best friend's Weibo posts.
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Set reminders for weekdays on Jike.
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Updates from the public account "Weixiaowei".
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Movies currently showing on Douban with a rating above 7.5.
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Zhihu Hot List.
BT Downloads#
Suppose you are a fan of American TV shows, let's see how to use RSS to follow Game of Thrones Season 8.
RSSHub has some routes that support BT downloads, such as the subscription address for Game of Thrones subtitles from Zimuzu: https://rsshub.app/zimuzu/resource/10733. Then we add a filter parameter to filter out Season 8 content: https://rsshub.app/zimuzu/resource/10733?filter=S08.
Then choose a normal BT client (not Thunder), I use Synology's Download Station.
Add the address to the BT client's RSS subscription, so when the TV show updates, the BT client will automatically download the latest episode to the hard drive. When you come home from work and turn on the TV, you can watch it directly.
Recently, the American and Japanese TV shows I subscribed to.
I receive an email from Synology when updates are available and downloads are complete.
Podcasts#
Suppose you are a podcast enthusiast, let's see how to expand your podcast library using RSS.
Podcast clients can access RSS feeds to check for updates and download new episodes in a series. RSSHub or getpodcast have some RSS feeds that support podcasts, so you can directly use them. For example, subscribe to a Netease Cloud Music ASMR radio station using the built-in Podcast app on iOS:
Integration#
RSS can be integrated with various interesting things through IFTTT.
One use case is my Telegram channel: https://t.me/awesomeDIYgod. It listens to many RSS updates through IFTTT, including DIYgod's blog updates, DIYgod's Shanbay check-ins, DIYgod's Twitter updates, DIYgod's liked Netease Cloud Music songs, DIYgod's Bilibili coin videos, and more.
This way, you can even easily control the lights, automatically print Weibo posts from beautiful girls using Guguji, and automatically tweet negative reviews of Game of Thrones at the screenwriters, all through RSS. Although it may not be very useful.
June 2nd Update:
An excellent integration: "Elegantly Download My Bilibili Coin Videos"
These are some scenarios and methods suitable for using RSS that I have listed. Now, do you have a deeper understanding of the statement "RSS is a format specification used for message aggregation"?