Mytvrss Becomes ‘followshows’

First ReadItLater morphs into Pocket, and now Mytvrss morphs into followshows. If you’re not familiar with mytvrss, it is a simple service that gives you notice in an RSS feed when your new shows are airing. Every day it gives me an update of shows I’m following in Google Reader. You could follow it in whatever reader works for you.

To try it, follow the link to mytvrss here, and then go to the top of the page and click on the ‘RSS feeds’ link you find there.  They give simple directions for creating a feed consisting only of the shows you watch.  Once you check the shows you want to follow, scroll to the bottom and click on ‘>Create feed’.  Now go up to the url and copy the id.

Next bop on over to followshows.com and sign on up.  From any screen after you sign up, go to the drop down menu with your name and select settings.  Enter your mytvrss id in the box provided and click import.  From now on followshows can provide an rss feed or send you emails whenever a new show is coming on.  The mytvrss people claim the feed from followshows is even prettier than what we’re used to seeing from mytvrss. The main change is that a thumbnail has been added to the feed.

But I like the calendar view, so that is what I bookmarked.  I also like that I can import the calender using the address at the bottom into my Google or Rainlendar or Rainmeter calendars.  The ‘Queue’ lists your shows from the newest to the oldest with a little thumbnail and some episode info.  ‘Home’ shows your recent activity.  ‘Tracker’ lists the shows you follow in alphabetical order.

It is a little hard to figure out how to delete a show. Go to the followshows show page (not just an episode). There will be a button that says ‘Following’ or ‘Follow’. If you hover over the ‘Following’ button it becomes ‘Unfollow’. Click ‘Unfollow’ to remove the show from your feed. I prefer the selection page at mytvrss and hope followshows will improve this on their site.

Other than that, the interface is very straightforward. It reminds me of Clicker in that regard. However, it is extremely slow to respond. [UPDATE: I returned to their site 2012-04-30 and it was snappy. Not sure what happened the first day.] That really is my only gripe about an otherwise excellent free service.

I think I’ll make this my only RSS feed in XBMC.  Then I’ll have a list of new shows scrolling across the home screen when I settle in for some quality time with the boob tube.

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