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I’ve been reading rss feeds on Google Reader for close to two years now, and reached the max of what it is capable of. The more time I spend on the interwebs, and that’s a ton of  time, the more sites I want updates for. If I sign up for a new social networking site, I might follow their blog or news feed. If I download a new App for my phone, I usually find out about the newest updates through their web site. The more of these little sites I subscribe to, the more cluttered my Google Reader becomes.

When I left GReader, three days ago, I had 32 feeds, and that was my limit. I now have 43 and looking for more every regularly. I am no longer afraid of subscribing to my hearts content. The solution? Fever. Fever is the newest project from developer/designer Shaun Inman. Let me start off by saying if you’ve never seen any of this guys work, such as mint, your in for a real treat. His designs are clean yet functional and his code (from what I can see) is fairly efficient. Anyway, I was turned on to fever by one of my favorite tech news sites, TechCrunch. I had been looking for a GReader replacement for some time, and when the article was written about fever I knew I had to check it out.

What is Fever?

Fever isn’t your typical web app, or program for that matter. It is meant to be self hosted and requires all the essentials that are needed to run web apps, such as php 5 and MySQL. Also you need a domain name, so you can’t run the software off of your laptop through WAMP. Not so odd right? Well you only get one user license with your purchase($30). You can’t split the cost with your friends or sell server space, it is what it is. Getting over these two facts were the only things standing between me, and what seemed to be the answer to all my rss complaints.

Main "Kindling" View

Fever takes a step back from the traditional view of “you subscribe to it, you’r going to read it.” There are about ten sites I subscribe to that regularly publish identical stories as other feeds. Fever eliminates the need to click through the same article over and over again by rating news articles by frequent links, meaning if “apple.com/iphone” is linked in five different articles, fever will optionally (pending the site isn’t on your blacklist) group them together in a “Hot” list, and then rates these by temperature relative to the human body. The “Hot” list seems to be a good feature if you where unable to check your feeds for several days, and wanted to quickly catch up with recent headlines. You can sort the “Hot” list by select the day to start and the days to include (e.g. you where out of town for a week, you would choose today to 7 days of news).

"Hot" View

The “Hot” list is based on two other lists. The first is “Kindling.” This is the your main feed, where your groups will be placed and unread counts made known. The sites you place in here are the sites that you always want to read, regardless of how “hot” the news is. You have the ability to group sites here and there are unread counts associated with these groups. The second list is “Sparks.” Here is where you put sites you don’t necessarily want to read, but respect what they post. Sites that support your “Kindling” subscriptions, and make supporting stories hotter on the “Hot” list. Also, I put heavy feeds such as Digg Popular to also reinforce the “Kindling” sites on my “Hot” list. The entire thing was confusing at first, because until you see it in action, you never get a truly good feel for the way things are sorted.

The Interface

The layout supports the system so well, it sealed the deal for me. It’s clean, which is a staple for anything I use often. You only see what you need to see, no adds, no text for the sake of text, just what your need. It’s somewhat customizable, with a handful of options the users can tweak and play with. In order to make it easier for me to make the GReader to fever transition I turned off the feeds column, made the layout fluid and had the posts auto expand on focus. These where about all the things I could change, but it was plenty for me. The hot keys are clutch. Their more intuitive than GReader’s, with space switching between posts and a handful of other options that make comfortable, mouseless reading easier. My favorite is the incorporation of the arrow keys to switch which portion of the page you’r focused on. Very intuitive.

Navigation While Updating

Summing It All Up

There are some major factors at play that helped me commit to this change in scenery. If I wouldn’t have had my own domain and server space, then this definitely would never have happened. For me to pay to use a web app is a huge step in and of itself. I’m not a “power reader.” I don’t have hundreds of feeds (yet). It’s a beautiful product that I highly recommend to anyone with has the space and time to set it up. I’m hosting it on Media Temple’s Grid Service and it uses around four “GPU’s” a day. If you have a Media Temple Grid Server you know what I’m referencing. The space requirement hasn’t even made blip on the radar of my stats yet.

The extra features it comes with are some very nice selling points as well. There is a cron script that can be used to auto refresh your feeds every 15 minutes automatically. There is also a webclip for the iPhone that makes keeping up with your feeds on the go a real joy. The only feature I really miss from GReader is the ability to share articles with the three other friends I have that use it. The social aspects are great, and if the big G catches up with the main reading aspect, I would be hard pressed not to switch back.

iPhone "Hot" View

If you are a moderate to power feed reader, fever is a quality investment. I believe Shaun will continue to update the software, and being able to follow all the feeds I want without worrying about become buried up to my eyes in irrelevant news is great. If you have the oportunity, be sure to give this one a try.

Main iPhone Navigation

[Fever]