Using FeedDemon Watches to filter out stuff you don’t want to read
I didn’t have the time to read through Nick’s recent deluge of FeedDemon tips, so this maybe a duplicate, but just in case, I had a bit of a Eureka moment earlier today.
One thing I’ve been bugging Nick about for quite awhile about is providing a means to mark posts as read automatically, what I like to call and “anti-watch”:
I would love love love it if I could configure an “anti-watch” that would automatically mark any post that contained a specific word or phrase as read. Case in point – iPhone.
I could see this being per-feed/folder/all, though I’d be happy with applying it to all if that was the only choice.
This came to mind again due to all the new iPhone SDK news coming out today. The Eureka moment arrived when I recalled a recent exchange with Nick about how I’d discovered that if you mark something read in a Watch, it gets marked read in the source feed. (I’m not sure when that snuck in – yeah, even I miss a few features – and Nick couldn’t recall which specific build it was, but I think he said it was new in 2.6.) I just realized that I could create a Watch of Things I Don’t Care About, add the keywords I want to filter, and mark it as read before I start reading. It helps to use the Unread Folders view and Unread filter, too (Does anyone not use those?!)
Yeah, it’s a kludge – automatically marking things would be better – but it works for me and I figured there may be a couple of others out there who could make use of it.
That, and I figured I should post something before everyone unsubscribes due to seeing me in their Dinosaurs reports. :)
Update – This same trick seems to work pretty well using NetNewsWire’s Smart Lists, too.