NetNewsWire
Most of the law students I know are news junkies. Whether its politics, sports, patent cases, or Paris Hilton’s latest shenanegans, we all want the latest news, and we want it now.
Unfortunately, law school absorbs a lot of time, and getting news from traditional sources like television and radio is slow. These are broad media sources, and the information they deliver is tailored to a broad audience. Yet if all I want is the latest Floyd Landis news, I don’t want to turn on the TV in hopes that ESPN will be carrying a story about it.
Sure, I can go to websites that focus on the information I’m looking for, but bouncing from site to site is a haphazard method. Thankfully, some clever folks created a standard called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Basically, it’s a means of delivering headlines and even full stories to Internet users in a convenient, easy to use (and free) fashion.
A similar protocol, called Atom, provides the same functionality. Most websites that contain oft-updated content display text along the lines of “Subscribe to Feed” or an orange icon like this:
So how do you read syndicated content once you’ve subscribed to a feed? Apple’s default web browser, Safari, supports RSS feeds natively. You can also use websites like Technorati, Syndic8, and My Yahoo! to collect feeds and read them at your leisure. All of these options are free.
For the last couple of years I’ve used NetNewsWire, a stand-alone OS X feed reader that was developed by Ranchero Software and subsequently purchased by NewsGator. It costs $30 (who do they think they’re fooling when they price it at $29.95?), but is well worth the expense.
NetNewsWire presents a much cleaner, more functional view of feeds than either Safari or any of the syndication sites like My Yahoo! The screen real estate is much more efficiently used than in Safari, and there are no annoying ads or other distractions, unlike the feed reader sites. Edward Tufte, if he hasn’t already seen it, would be impressed with the efficiency of NetNewsWire’s interface.
Skimming a large number of stories is fast and easy. By default, NetNewsWire renders stories in feed form. If you like, you can click on a link to the story and read it directly on the originating website using your favorite web browser. If you don’t want to bother with opening another application, NNW has built-in web browser capabilities, so you can see the actual web page within NetNewsWire. It even supports tabbed browsing.
I’m a big fan of the “Daring Status Bar” theme, but NNW can be customized to show feeds with a variety of different skins.
Lest you think NetNewsWire is an extravagance, consider its uses in law school beyond newsgathering for personal interests. For example, my “Mass Communications” folder contains feeds from a variety of sites that look at the same Net Neutrality news items from different perspectives. This allows me to stay current on issues that affect my Mass Communications seminar class. Setting up a folder for each class and finding appropriate news feeds for each wouldn’t take long, and the end result would be a tailored stream of news directly applicable to your classes.
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