Thanks for another episode on a favourite topic—RSS (yes, I have listened to them all),
As a matter fact I do have more than 100 feeds, even though I sympathize with David. The reason is that I cover a lot of different areas due mission, vision and decision. Essentially these are from government, authorities, scientific and technological channels, scholarly papers and books, daily news, TV shows available as public service streaming services and more.
And yes, I read them all—in brief or in full—on a daily basis. So, one of the most interesting things, according to people who have watched me “live” is my semi-automatic workflow.
Main tools
NetNewsWire 5.0.4
I have used NetNewsWire (NNW) for many years but was hesitant to upgrade because I didn’t want any interruptions to my feeds. After the MPU episode #509 with Brent Simmons I decided I just had to make the move. Today I am very grateful to Brent for his neat and clean reader that suits my needs very well.
Safari
As a matter of convenience I often actually read most of the articles in a web browser which happens to be Safari due to other workflows. (Streaming though usually goes through SRWare Iron, below.)
Alfred
Alfred is my most goto tool even though I use Keyboard Maestro (KM) sometimes and other tools like Brett Terpstra’s Bunch and more.
Other tools
The following apps are also used depending on the content: Evernote, OmniOutliner, Due, MySpeed from Enounce, SRWare Iron, due to security issues in Catalina, BBEdit, Hazel, Trello and of course the ubiquitous Drafts.
Semi-automatic workflow
-
⌃N (control N, actually n) activates NetNewsWire
This is part of several general ‘Hot Apps’ in Alfred with ⌃ key as the trigger.
Sometimes I read the least interesting articles directly in NNW but mostly not.
If the Smart Feed All Unread < 100 then select all, else select approximately 100 articles.
-
⌘↩︎ (command return) runs through all consecutive selected articles and opens them as tabs in a fresh window in Safari.
I didn’t find this option in NNW so I wrote a simple AppleScript with a repeat statement and then some keystrokes to simulate arrow down and return.
Now, enter Safari and go through all tabs.
-
⌘! (command shift 1 on my keyboard) if the article has some kind of argument I want to use later and is not part of my shared web pages.
The title and url is appended to a text file Argument.txt and if I press ⌥ the intro or pre-amble is added too. If anything in particular is selected that is also inserted into Argument.txt.
Later when writing or talking to somebody I can confidently say, “Yes, that reminds me…” and with a few keystrokes easily open the referred web page.
Other keywords in Alfred like !!phrase searches for phrase with BBEdit in Argument.txt and !# simply count them, while !" [n] gives the tail of the file with an optional argument n how many to show in Alfred’s Large type.
-
Clip to Evernote sends the page, or part of it to a chosen notebook, if the article is shared support material for a certain project or specific area of responsibility. (Articles that are shared are almost always read carefully so I can remember and cite the information correctly. I would strongly recommend these procedures for the Trump administration.)
-
References like scholarly papers are downloaded and Hazel moves them to the folder Add to Bookends so the application Bookends can import them automatically.
Unfortunately Bookends was required to be open for this to happen so I used KM to detect when Bookends is opened and then touchall the files in that folder whith a Bash script in KM to give Bookends the ‘impression’ that the files were ‘added after’ Bookends was opened.
- Books are searched for and added to wish lists in Audible or Adlibris book store or sometimes ordered directly.
- TV shows I would like—or—need to see are put on hold and then watched later—often at 2x or 3x speed with the tool Enounce MySpeed that for security reasons requires a web browser like SRWare Iron in order to work (which I find rather annoying but as a decent work around).
-
Important web pages that I need to keep track of, or will need later, go into my Agenda workflow with OmniOutliner (described earlier similar to Hooks).
- Web pages may also be sent directly to Due in the agenda workflow or may be directed to a Bunch file.
- Things I would like to try or buy are sent to my Trello board GTD (and them moved from the lane Maybe to ToDo, Doing or Done, if not archived and removed.
I have had many argument with various IT department over the years that want to coerce certain solutions on all employees. The most serious argument is that I would need an assistant working about 50–100 percent full time if the workflow above and many others couldn’t be used. It’s like asking me as a pianist (which has in fact happened): ”Sorry, we don’t have any piano. Can you use a guitar instead?” or to a surgeon: ”In this organization everybody should use scissors as the only permitted cutting tool.”
This is no rocket science for you guys but once I told an IT guy I would need to change employer if I could not get the work done in an efficient way. The next day I was offered a new job from a much more flexible and tech savvy employer.
I still just visit the blue and green in the browser, for some reason. But that is certainly a good one.
