RSS readers are a great way to keep up with news and information from your favorite web sites. However, they’re not for everyone. Setting them up can be kind of tricky for people who aren’t tech-savvy, and many RSS readers lack eye appeal.
Aside from creating an iGoogle page, ThyNews is probably the easiest way to set up a custom news page using RSS feeds. Log in using Google, Facebook or another similar service, and then use ThyNews to search for your favorite websites. ThyNews finds their feeds, lets you preview them, and then loads them onto the page. You can then drag and drop feeds to place them in the order you prefer.
That’s pretty much all there is to it. You can choose a custom URL for your ThyNews page (for example, mine is http://thynews.com/alisonk#), so you can pull it up from any computer or share it with others.
ThyNews has a simple, black-and-white newspaper-style interface. One thing that I felt was missing was the ability to create separate pages or “sections” for different topics. When I’m reading stuff that’s work-related, it’s probably best that I not get distracted by unrelated content like new posts from my favorite cooking blog.
ThyNews is much easier to use than Feedly, which offers a similar service. However, Feedly has a more attractive interface, better social networking support and lets me organize my news into sections, so that’s probably what I’ll stick with.
To be fair, ThyNews is aimed at people who don’t currently use RSS, and I think it does a pretty good job of serving that market. Since it’s so easy to set-up, even marginally-tech-savvy people (hi Mom!) can get started quickly.
What do you think of ThyNews?
Our Rating of ThyNews
Categories:web