Low Noise Way to Read LifeHacker / Gawker Media Sites With SmartFeed

LifeHacker is a nifty blog in Nick Denton’s blogomerate (blog + conglomerate) which provides interesting tips for computer users. So here is my tip for LifeHacker users (and other readers of Gawker Media), LifeHacker style.

One of the problem with Gawker media sites is that they are often filled with several Flash based ads which tend to slow down your computer. So how can we view these sites, with minimal ads, over the web and without messing with AdBlockers?

LifeHacker and other Gawker Media sites chose to avoid the RSS full feed versus summary feed controversy by deciding to provide both. They provide ad-free summarized feed and full-content feed with ads.

Interestingly they use FeedBurner SmartFeed service to provide their full feed. SmartFeed recognizes that you are using a browser to view the feed and it automatically converts the feed to easily readable (on browser) format.

Gawker Media in all goodness decided not to overload the RSS feed with ads probably because of low ad tolerance of RSS subscribers and low capabilities of most RSS viewer software.

So all you have to do is simply click on their full feed to view LifeHacker content with minimal (really minimal) ads and without painful flash ads from falkag. The same should work for all Gawker media sites.

Note: The simple tip above doesn’t circumvent their system in any way. It merely gives you a low-noise webpage version of their site, allowing you the same bliss as RSS subscriber sans RSS reader software.

Note: Gawker Media can easily disable this by choosing not to use SmartFeed.