Weekly Report #67 - Reshaping My Information Input System with Follow

Preface#

weekly_review_20240805

This article is a record and reflection on life from 2024-07-31 to 2024-08-04.

The happiest moment this week was experiencing Follow, a long-awaited app that excited me. I compared it with Readwise and decided to cancel my subscription; I created a self-hosted Web Archive solution, and it felt great to "eat your own dog food"; I continued to work on wall paintings with my senior; and there were many interesting things.

Reshaping My Information Input System with Follow#

My Information Input System#

A long time ago, I was actually a heavy information user. Whenever I found a good blog or news site, I would quickly add it to my RSS feed, happily looking at the neatly organized list of categories and tags; when I encountered a good newsletter, I would immediately subscribe with my email; the first thing I did every morning was to clear the unread items in Reeder 4, which I was still using at the time, and then browse through the emails in the newsletter one by one.

At first, it was okay. It seemed that I could read the information and articles I cared about right away, which gave me a sense of satisfaction. But gradually, it became overwhelming. The time I spent on it every morning increased, and even articles I wasn't interested in took some time to digest. Rather than acquiring information, it was more like a compensation for my craving for information and anxiety about it. The effect was there; information left traces in my brain, but the digestion efficiency was not high.

After reading "Using Automated Workflows to Aggregate Information Ingestion and Output" and "Saying No to Newsletters," I made significant adjustments.

In terms of information sources, I unsubscribed from all public accounts and newsletters and reduced my RSS subscriptions to about 50. Most of my remaining input came from Twitter, other people's Telegram channels, etc., which helped avoid information silos while keeping my input at a manageable level.

Additionally, I built an automatic synchronization system for input and output sources using n8n + Telegram channel, which automatically syncs all my filtered information sources to my Telegram channel "Yu's Life," making it easy for me to view and review, and it also serves as a personal sharing channel. The pressure of being public also pushed me to be more serious about filtering information sources.

However, this solution still had two problems:

I still couldn't solve the issue of dispersed information sources. I needed to frequently switch between Twitter and various TG Channels, which easily distracted me and I still might miss some messages.
I often treated the channels as a sort of personal collection. Sometimes a lot of information was very personal, and as the number of followers grew, I felt some psychological pressure, worrying about becoming noise in others' information streams.

The emergence of Follow happened to fill this gap in my solution.

Follow#

Introduction#

Next generation information browser

This is Follow's slogan. Before its release, I merely regarded it as an alternative RSS reader. Although I was familiar with RSSHub and heavily used my own deployed instance, it was still hard to imagine how much potential could be unleashed based on this old protocol until its release and several days of intensive use helped me gradually understand this concept.

In an era where RSS has long declined, apart from independent blogs, which still retain complete RSS support, most news, information, and various niche websites no longer provide it. RSSHub has become the perfect and almost the only solution, converting web information sources, including but not limited to Twitter, TG Channels, Bilibili, and NetEase Cloud playlists, into standard RSS format, allowing updates from these sources to be obtained like subscribing to articles.

However, RSSHub is still more of a middle-layer tool. Even with standard RSS data, most readers can only handle text display, and the handling of audio, video, and images basically stops at treating them as URLs. Therefore, I mostly used it in my n8n synchronization workflow as notifications, only retaining their titles and links, still needing to click the source link to jump to the corresponding webpage, which often felt disjointed.

The biggest feature of Follow is its inheritance of RSSHub's "Everything Can Be RSS" concept, providing presentation methods for various forms of content such as videos, images, blog audio, articles, and social media at the application level. It indeed feels like a leap from pure HTML to modern CSS effects after a long time. Technically, achieving this step is not too high of a barrier; whether it's video iFrames, audio players, or image previews, there are relatively mature components available. However, Follow is almost the only product still targeting this protocol and doing it well. Sometimes, doing a little better is enough.

Experience#

follow_homepage

As an information browser/reader, the most intuitive and core aspects are the interface and interaction. The combination of DIYGod and a couple of others raised my expectations early on, but even in the first version of the beta test, its completeness and experience still amazed me. Before this, the most modern one was probably Reeder 4, and Follow, even though it is built on Electron rather than pure native, still maintains extremely refined design and interaction.

I had previously used several readers like NetNewsWire, Reeder 4, Miniflux, and Readwise Reader, but since the reading experience often wasn't as good as the original webpage, I mostly chose to jump to the links. However, the pages and interactions of Follow made me enjoy the experience itself. There’s also a very interesting recent reading record display that shows which visitors have viewed my articles, and I can click into their homepage to see their information sources, combining social attributes and information source accumulation. I discovered many personal blogs I hadn't noticed before through this method.

Additionally, since Follow is deeply integrated with RSSHub, it allows direct subscriptions to social media by inputting Twitter handles, Bilibili UIDs, and YouTube channel names, without needing to find the corresponding routes on the RSSHub website or set up instances myself, which is very user-friendly.

follow_pic

follow_video

The direct display of videos and images is also a major highlight. I saw a user using some designers' Twitter accounts as their source of design inspiration and aesthetic accumulation, which is also a meaningful application scenario.

Audio/podcasts can be played globally in Follow. For example, in the lower left corner of the previous screenshots, I was synchronously playing an episode of "Beyond Code," which also solved my problem of having to jump between multiple podcast applications like Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Xiaoyuzhou.

Moreover, sharing my subscriptions is quite convenient: https://web.follow.is/profile/pseudoyu

There are actually many designs, such as the Action module and Power rewards, but this article is not a software review but rather a personal experience, so I won't elaborate too much. Once it opens up, everyone can experience it themselves and retain some surprises. Next, I want to discuss the comparison with Readwise Reader, which I am currently using, and why I plan to switch to Follow.

Readwise Reader -> Follow#

readwise_sub

I subscribed to Readwise Full membership around September last year. Although it offers a 50% discount for developing countries, it still costs nearly $50 a year. It is large and comprehensive, but the core functions I actually use are only three:

RSS reader
Read later, save articles, and highlight annotations
Daily Digest

The first point is the most frequently used, serving as a very convenient reader to manage my articles and subscriptions, and it has a mobile app for viewing anytime. However, I found that sometimes the display style and image loading were quite average, and the categorization and shortcuts were a bit too complicated, mainly supporting articles, which can obviously be completely replaced by Follow (waiting for a mobile version).

I used to rely heavily on highlighting annotations, using plugins to take notes on some articles and saving them to Readwise, then syncing my articles to my Telegram Channel via n8n. However, I became overly dependent on the platform. When I really wanted to digest those highlighted notes into some formed ideas or articles, I needed to go back to Readwise to check. Even syncing to Logseq or Heptabase for organization was still not convenient, especially after I switched to Apple Notes as my main and only note-taking tool. I found that directly excerpting/recording some ideas was the most efficient and easier to generate value, so the highlighting aspect gradually faded from my note flow.

save_website

As we all know, "read later" usually evolves into "never read later," so my current strategy is to almost never use "read later," trying to finish reading immediately, only temporarily saving a very few longer ones, and trying to clear the list on the same day. Now, I display unread as the default mode in Follow, often browsing through it. When I encounter interesting articles that I read through, I use the star feature to save them in my favorites. When I finish reading and gain something, I use a browser plugin + Cloudflare Worker API + n8n to save the article link and source HTML file to the D1 database, achieving a Web Archive and automatically syncing it to my Telegram Channel.

The third point, Daily Digest, helps me review some of my notes or articles. This is useful but not frequent, and I haven't yet explored whether Follow's Action module can perform operations on multiple articles.

Since my core needs can all be transferred to Follow, I decisively unsubscribed from Readwise. I can clearly feel that my information intake quantity and quality have significantly improved in the past few days. A good software is not just an auxiliary tool; it can have a deeper impact on thinking and habits.

Personal Life Snapshots#

Electron Bug#

talk_with_innei

I just discovered an issue with the Follow client update; the "Click to restart" window hides instead of quitting. A familiar bug; I encountered the same one when writing EpubKit 🤣. I reported it to Shiyi, sharing the electron bug experience.

macOS Desktop Decoration#

macos_widgets

I tried macOS system desktop widgets for the first time, and it was quite fresh. However, I mostly switch applications using Raycast shortcuts, so I hardly see the desktop...

Garage Wall Painting#

car_painting_week2

Overall progress this week: 20%, it is taking shape.

My progress this week: I painted five or six bricks 🤣.

Interesting Things and Items#

Input#

Although most interesting inputs are automatically synced in the "Yu's Life" Telegram channel, I still selected a portion to list here, making it feel more like a newsletter. I also built a microblog using Telegram Channel messages as content sources - "daily.pseudoyu.com," which makes browsing more convenient.

Favorites#

Podcasts#

Articles#

Videos#

Movies#

Stroll and Stop, I really like the cinematography in the scene of being stuck in traffic on the highway; life is just about strolling and stopping.