A couple of days ago, I came across two websites, Feedshake and RSSMad, that offer RSS Reader services via a browser.

My initial impression of RSSMad is that it is appropriately named. I don't think I've had a more irritating, annoying experience with a feed reader site. When I tested the service before registering (free), it pretended to accept Atom-formatted feeds. But after I registered, not only did it take me three times to enter the same Atom feed URL before I actually glimpsed the nearly invisible message saying that it wasn't a proper RSS feed. Fair enough, no Atom feeds. Stupid idea, but that's their choice.

Feedshake is much more smartly-designed. Or so I thought. It lets you take multiple RSS or Atom feeds, including podcasts, and create your own custom mixed feed. This is an example of the type of web feed application I've been talking about in earlier posts.

Unfortunately, the simple interface is actually a bit cryptic. Also, their method of entering the multiple source feed URLs is annoying. I'm used to separating multiple items of data with EITHER spaces or commas, preferably the latter. They only allow whitespace. It's not that hard to tweak your program code to fix this, and so it's rather disappointing that they don't offer Atom support. (Ignore the fact that I actually prefer RSS over Atom; the support should still be there.)

But the surprise with Feedshake is that once you create your mixed-source feed, you can't actually view it in your Feedshake account (via your browser). Their service generates a new, custom XML feed for you, which you then have to use a separate feed reader to browse (unless you like looking at raw XML data).

Anyway, I'll get off my high-horse and cut at least Feedshake some slack. They tried a bit harder than RSSMad. And just maybe, I'll get RSSMad just mad enough to add Atom support.