You can now enjoy trawlr.com on the go by visiting http://iphone.trawlr.com/ (or visit the usual site and follow the link). It’s been fully optimised for ultra-fast loading with minimal data transfer – it even feels nippy here in the UK on GPRS.
As always, any feedback is greatly appreciated – add your comment here or email me directly at ben [at] trawlr.com
You can now enjoy trawlr.com in all 3 major browsers; Firefox, Safari and IE7.
Another extra feature is that you can collapse the right-hand bar to maximise the item view…
It may have gone quiet on the blog recently, but trawlr is being continually improved. Here are some of the recent, exciting new features…
There’s also been work on improving performance; I hope you’re enjoying the site.
Since just over a week ago Feedburner has started showing trawlr.com subscribers in its feed stats. You might have recently noticed a slight jump in the number of subscribers to your blog or website (not quite on the scale of Google Reader)!
The Feedburner stats for the trawlr blog are shown below, with a healthy 56% of subscribers from trawlr. The jump in subscriber number is also shown in red on the graph.
I’d like to say a big thanks to the Feedburner team for including trawlr subscribers (and good luck for your future with Google)!
Confused about RSS and want a straight-forward explanation of the benefits of using an RSS reader? Then check out the 3.5 minute video below.
There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don’t. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don’t know where to start.
You can of course use trawlr as your RSS reader!
Video created by and found thanks to Common Craft.
Some of you may have noticed that trawlr hasn’t been quite as snappy as usual; at least it’s been causing me to hang around waiting and I wasn’t happy. Part of the reason for this is due to the explosion in the number of feeds that are now being crawled (thanks to all the new users). The server has been given an extra helping of resources (RAM, CPU) to cope and it’s given the site an immediate performance boost.
It looks like I’m still the site’s current feed addict with exactly 397 subscriptions – with the appropriate tagging and favourite feeds I can easily keep on top of my subscriptions (and ensure I don’t miss those usefull nuggets of RSS gold).
That’s it for now, more updates are on the way!
You may have noticed a big, black void in place of your favourite rss aggregator tonight… I’m dreadfully sorry to report that there were some issues with the server that had to be resolved. Luckily the site is backed up regularly (at least daily) so almost no data was lost – the only stuff that disappeared were the items crawled today (but they’ll be back soon).
Sorry for any disappointment this has caused, normal service has now resumed :-)
There’s been an intermittent problem with OPML feed imports on trawlr recently. I’m glad to say that the problem is now resolved.
If you’ve experienced a problem with OPML imports then I urge you to give it one more try… it should be sweet!
Also a quick note, the OPML file import can take a while (up to an hour for your new subscriptions to show up). During this time you can safely browse away from the import status page and either continue using the site or give it a short while and then come back later when all your feeds will be ready & waiting.
Any further problems? Just drop me a note below.
Another day brings some more changes to your favourite rss aggregator (I hope).
1. Subscribe to a feed very easily via the feed’s page. You can also mark the feed as a favourite (click on the star icon in the orange subscription box) and add any tags to the feed.
2. When viewing an item you can quickly share it or mark as a favourite by clicking on the relevant icons (star for favourite and the transmit icon to share). The number of users who have read this item is also shown.
3. BUG FIX: There was a small problem with the feed tagging, if you’ve already tagged some of your feeds you might have to re-tag them. Really sorry about this issue and hope it hasn’t caused you any major headaches?
Thanks to Peter Cooper, trawlr has been featured on Ruby Inside along with an interview with myself about the application’s development.
Trawlr: An amazingly simple Rails-powered feed reader
Welcome to all the new users… I hope you find the site useful and stick around to help make it even better.
(You might experience some slight delay with OPML file import and subscribing to new feeds for a brief period).
After feedback (from a comment on this blog) I’ve just released a new, more friendly home page for the site as shown below.
There’s also been a small change of URL; if you want to bookmark your main rss page simply point to http://www.trawlr.com/reader/
Another hot update to trawlr adding a couple of useful features for you.
Have fun ;-)
The latest new feature for trawlr.com is the ability to comment on all feed items. You can now discuss items with other trawlr users along with the usual favourite and sharing features.
Basic formatting is supported (via Textile), for an example of this feature and to start commenting yourself check out the following item (from this blog’s feed).
Hope you enjoy.
No web2.0 site is complete without the obligatory screencast…. So I’ve created one, just over 4 minutes long, that walks through the main features of trawlr.com. The first screencast, and hopefully more in the future, is available in the screencasts section:
http://blog.trawlr.com/screencasts
Note: There is NO sound for this screencast, so sit back and enjoy…!
trawlr.com is a new online rss aggregator designed to make it easy to keep up to date with all your rss feeds.
Some of the current features include a “river of news” style feed view with infinite scroll (i.e. no paging), public sharing and favourite feeds.
Want to see an example of a public shared feed? Take a look at my shared items (or subscribe to the rss feed).
If you own a blog and see the following User-Agent appearing in your logs or web-stats, it’s probably the trawlr crawler (can you see where the name originates)! It will even tell you the number of subscribers to your feed.
trawlr.com (+http://www.trawlr.com; 99 subscribers)
Register for a trawlr.com account now. It’s free, takes seconds and there’s instant access with no email activation required!
Development blog for trawlr.com online rss aggregator
