Fever: Creative RSS Solutions for Busy People
Posted June 17th, 2009 / By Chad Engle in App Designers, App Developers, Apps, Featured, Reviews, Top Apps, Web, iPhone
Today Shaun Inman launched a creative RSS Reader solution called Fever. (Whats an RSS Reader?)
To make the most of the Hot list, Fever asks you to make a simple distinction between essential and supplemental feeds. Essential, must-read feeds are Kindling. Supplemental, low signal-to-noise feeds are Sparks. Sparks ignite Kindling raising the temperature of items and links that should not be missed.
Fever is an awesome alternative for readers because it lets you know what you need to read. I felt like I needed more information or a demo before I made my $30 purchase so here is a video review about the app.
View on Vimeo.
Availability:
Fever comes as a web application. This means that is open to PC and Mac users. However you have to host it yourself so if your server doesn’t support a Unix-like server (no IIS) running Apache, PHP 4.2.3+ and MySQL 3.23+ then you can’t run it. The good news is that it also has an iPhone version as well. This makes it super easy for you to take your feeds with you and keep them in the same exact order that they were in when you left your desk. You can also run fever using Fluid App (highlighted here) and I am 99.9% sure you can run Mozilla Prizm as well. This means you can have an awesome stand alone reader to use with your feeds.
iPhone Images
Where can I connect with the Creator Shaun?
Shaun is on Twitter he also is the creator of HaveAMint a fresh look at your website traffic. Shaun also has a blog and a wicked looking website.
Twitter Buzz:
Future Posts?
I am going to play around with Fever more and get to know the ins and outs of it. I plan on making a review of it vs. Google Reader to see if the app lives up to its $30 price tag compared to its free G-Reader counterpart. Where ratings are given to both of the apps and the +/- are weighed to see which one is the best bet depending on what you want out of your reader.
Stay tuned for the post. The best way is to subscribe or follow us on twitter so you don’t miss a beat.
Grab the Feed
Looks very interesting. I don’t think I could justify paying $30 for an rss reader though, especially one I have to set up and host myself. I look forward to your comparison between Fever and Google Reader.
I have been a google reader user for years and this is the first thing that actually makes a stab at beating it. (haven’t gotten used to it fully so I can’t say its beat it yet.) But the comparison will have unbiased factual information. Not me ranting :) Then you can make your own informed decision as to what to do.
Super informative post! I though fever seemed a little gimmicky at first, but I might actually give it a shot. The iPhone version is just a great plus.
Awesome post, thanks!
Really nice review / introduction to fever,
The application looks really well put together with all its features, but to me it doesnt say “you need this” especially for $30 i could goto delicious popular to sees whats hot!
Id love to see the google vs fever review in the future tho, should be intresting, good stuff.
I understand the desire and in some cases the need for such a tool, but it is indeed a sad sight for the more obscure content producers. But then, I guess it was bound to happen, as this is the case with music, television and books, too. When will people learn that what’s popular isn’t necessarily what’s best? (Note: This isn’t to say that all things popular are bad, because that isn’t true, either.)
I understand your point. However Fever still lets you see the original content you always wanted to see not just the popular stuff. The point of fever is so you can subscribe to a mass amount of feeds and be able to keep track of whats popular online. Through the Kindling section you can still keep track of the feeds you want to . This app just gives you the versatility to subscribe to more than humanly possible in a normal reader.
I’m using Fever for a few weeks now, and I quite like it. It’s a beatifull app, for sure. But it’s only very usefull to get a list of posts that appear in multiple blog you subscribed to.
It’s pretty useful for very busy people with a lot of feeds in their list. It’s not if you just follow 50 or less blogs.
You could see Fever as some sort of charts, but then from rss/we content.