Put Together Quickly

New self hosted feed reader from Shaun Inman (creator of Mint)

I got an email yesterday morning that Shaun Inamn's new application Fever had been released. To say Fever is just a feed reader is an understatement, because it includes a recommendation engine that sits on top of the feed reader to help you make better use of the feeds that you follow.

It took me a while to get use to using Fever, because I encountered a bug when using it in FireFox (3.0.11). When I clicked in the shaded grey area of an item it would not switch between the excerpt and the full post. Instead I would have to click on the link and load the post in a different tab or window (bug submitted via Fever contact page). It was a bit confusing and had me wondering how this would be a better replacement for my current feed reader - Google Reader with the helvetireader theme - but after creating a Fluid app for Fever I realized that it was a bug when used with Firefox on my end. I also found out later that there is a keyboard shortcut to switch between the excerpt and full view.

Just like with Mint, Fever is a self-hosted PHP application which has caused some people to question why it isn't a hosted service. They either have a short memory or did not have any experience with Feed Lounge. Feed Lounge was a great hosted feed reader from Scott Sanders and Alex King. The service encountered several stability and hardware issues that contributed to the service being shutdown. So instead of having to deal with the hosting of the service, Shaun places his attention on the code that runs the app allowing its users to use one of the many hosting options that are available.

Installation

Using the "Fever Server Compatibility Suite" you will test the compatibility of the webserver you're installing on and after successful completion of the test be able to install and configure the application.

Main Interface

When you log in to your new Fever installation, you're presented with the screen below.

You will find your three primary areas: Group list, Feed list and items (the actual posts). You can navigate between each of these areas by using the arrow keys - up and down keys to switch from the group list, feed list and items. The left and right keys will cycle you through the previous or next group or feed.

At any time you can select to view the keyboard shortcuts in the menu (shown below) under the Fever icon in the top left-hand side of the page. That is where I found the work around for the the bug that I encountered in FireFox by selecting "0" to switch an item between showing the excerpt or full content.

Feed Management

You can add feeds by either importing an OPML file from your other reader or using the Feedlet. If you do use an OPML file consider selecting "import automatically add new feeds to Sparks" in the preferences (shown below). This will make managing the recommendation engine of Fever a bit easier.

The Feedlet is a bookmarklet (located in the extras area of the menu) that will give the option to add the feed, pick which groups to add it to, authentication and how to display the content in Fever. You can then create groups to better organize your feeds and remember for any feed that is in the Sparks group it will not appear in either the Kindling or custom groups. You can add feeds to custom groups by either editing the feed or by simply dragging the feed from the Feed list to the group in the Group list you want to add it to.

In the extra section you will also find the information necessary to setup a cron job to refresh the feeds you have subscribed to.

Recommendation Engine

The way this works is that you have feeds in your "Kindling" supergroup (that includes any custom groups as well) that are on topics that you are most interested in and you use the feeds in the "Sparks" to increase the temperature of that topic. So you are getting the current hot topic displayed as a combined discussion from any of the feeds that you follow over a period of time that you pick.

I imported a few older OPML files that I exported before pruning my feeds and I added the RSS feed for the people I follow on Twitter. By adding both as "Sparks" I should be highlighting more of the topics that I follow in the Kindling supergroup.

Conclusion

After my first day using Fever I can see it replacing my current feed reader and I have replaced it with it, but I still have a few points that I would like to see fixed or changed. I have been encountering a few random blank white screens after moving a feed to a custom group. This may be due to PHP running under CGI and not using mod_php (not allowed at my hosting provider) and so far I've not seen anything in the Apache error log. Along those lines I would like to see better documentation. I've seen references to a debug mode, but so far I've not seen any documentation on how to enable or use it and this would be helpful to fix the blank white screens. Draggable modal boxes - there have been times that I'm not able to see the entire modal box when editing a feed due to the size of the browser window and being able to drag the modal would be very helpful.

Managing feeds could be more streamlined. I need to try it again, but it looks like when I imported feeds from an OPML file it did not add them to the sparks group even though I have that set in the preferences. Keyboard shortcuts or a way to do multiple deletes or "move to sparks" would be a welcomed change. Currently you have to delete or move each feed into the sparks group one at a time and the deletion include a confirmation step.

It will not be for everyone, because it is a self-hosted application and so far looks like you cannot run it locally. But if you are looking for a better way to get a handle on your feeds then Fever with it's recommendation system is a perfect candidate for you.

Feel free to share your thoughts using twitter or email.

View the previous article: Twitter as a Critical Infrastructure or find more in the archives.