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O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

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Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#151

Post by vanderZwan »

greggman wrote: post #110
robocaptain wrote: post #84

I've been paying for newsblur ( http://www.newsblur.com/ ) ever since google reader bit the dust. It's pretty much a direct replacement. Interface has come a long way since day one and is sufficiently slick now (UI, keyboard shortcuts, etc) that I don't really notice it. Highly recommended by a (former) hardcore google reader user. If I recall correctly, got quite a good bit of press here on HN at the time.

I'm a newsblur user but it is in no way a placement for reader. For one newsblur will only track the last 30 days of posts (or is it 30 news posts). So for example in reader I might add site like Unity's blog. Reader would show the entire history as unread. I could then slowly go through all the old tutorials since they're all there. Newsblur I can't do that. It won't pull in stuff past a certain date/count. That als…

TBF, Newsblur doesn't enjoy the craploads of infrastructure that Google has.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#152

Post by mmanfrin »

People are suggesting replacements for Reader, but none of them capture the ux that Reader found perfection at. Newer readers have been trying to outcompete each other with nice convenience features, but it muddies the strength of what Reader was: simple.

I'm still smarting over the loss of Reader, and I don't think I'll ever forgive Google for its shuttering.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#153

Post by archagon »

interfixus wrote: post #11

There are decent readers out there. Liferea or Thunderbird will do in a pinch, and much as I hate to admit it, Netvibes is actually superb. The tragedy isn't some Google tool being retired, the tragedy is the way feeds are slowly disappearing. It's a slow and creeping death, but it's a death. More and more sites are dropping their feeds and replacing them with some twitterish Facebook nonsense. [edit: typo]

Really? I've yet to find a single blog of interest that's lacking an RSS feed (though it might be implicit instead of explicit — Feedbin usually finds the link if I drop in the URL).

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#154

Post by wslh »

disposition2 wrote: post #111
fourneau wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that... normal? 2350 feeds seems like an astronomical amount of news feeds. Can I ask how much of that do you read?

Agreed, very curious how much of that actually gets even glanced over. I thought I was information overload with ~150 sites. I hope OP uses the 'focus' features so they can get a modicum of information from those 2350 feeds.

> I thought I was information overload with ~150 sites.

It mainly depends of the feed volume, not how many feeds are you subscribed to. I cherry picked a lot of personal blogs that are not updated often.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#155

Post by zanny »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #129
zanny wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get better UX than clicking an RSS link and it adding itself to your feed reader? It isn't the protocol, it is that there is no profit in an open standard like that. Google killed their Reader because they wanted everyone forced into G+, rather than consuming content from around the Internet. It is the same thing with messaging and VOIP. Nobody wants to use an open standard like XMPP or more recently Matri…

> How do you get better UX than clicking an RSS link and it adding itself to your feed reader? Well, you need to have a feed reader set up.

You need to signup for Facebook / Twitter as well. And there are browser based feed readers. The only downside is the lack of availability of web-based feed reader support in browsers.

That might be partially on the onus of the reader, but it would require you to at least install an extension to add their site as your default feed processor. That can be a UX loss.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#157

Post by disposition2 »

wslh wrote: post #154
disposition2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, very curious how much of that actually gets even glanced over. I thought I was information overload with ~150 sites. I hope OP uses the 'focus' features so they can get a modicum of information from those 2350 feeds.

> I thought I was information overload with ~150 sites. It mainly depends of the feed volume, not how many feeds are you subscribed to. I cherry picked a lot of personal blogs that are not updated often.

That was my perception, a lot of personal blogs, thank you for clarifying.

Somewhat unrelated, but it would be neat if there was some kind of lost and found for RSS as I have sites from the early 00s that I followed which are no longer updated but I imagine the author just changed their site, etc.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#158

Post by shostack »

bdarnell wrote: post #89
kristianc wrote: post #60

RSS was and still is great for following a few blogs that were relatively infrequently updated. If I follow Rands, DF or Marco, it works quite well. I receive timely, relevant content at a pace I can cope with and digest. The problem with RSS is that it scales incredibly badly for large, content heavy sites. I don't really want to see everything that Gizmodo publishes. I certainly don't want to see everything that Hu…

If RSS scales badly for sites like Gizmodo, don't use it for sites like Gizmodo. RSS is great for small-scale personal publishing; in fact some sort of aggregator is practically a necessity for such a thing to work (this is why blogging has drifted to tumblr, facebook, and twitter: publishing integrated with aggregated consumption is a powerful thing). This leads to a chicken and egg problem: when someone is first in…

The other issue is that a lot of these sites gate the content fed through RSS to make you visit the site for the whole thing (plus, you know, ad impressions).

RSS works best when the content can be fully digestible in the reader. If you can read most of it there, great--you get a preview. What I hated was when I'd get like a line or two, or couldn't even see an image load in an image-only post without visiting a sloth of a site.

Oddly enough, my Reddit homepage is pretty decent now due to pruning subscriptions and using RES.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#159

Post by lepouet »

robocaptain wrote: post #84

I've been paying for newsblur ( http://www.newsblur.com/ ) ever since google reader bit the dust. It's pretty much a direct replacement. Interface has come a long way since day one and is sufficiently slick now (UI, keyboard shortcuts, etc) that I don't really notice it. Highly recommended by a (former) hardcore google reader user. If I recall correctly, got quite a good bit of press here on HN at the time.

I just want to second that, it's working perfectly.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#160

Post by aw3c2 »

platz wrote: post #126
disposition2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, very curious how much of that actually gets even glanced over. I thought I was information overload with ~150 sites. I hope OP uses the 'focus' features so they can get a modicum of information from those 2350 feeds.

But is your intention really to read every post by every site you're subscribed to? Someone subscribed to over 1000 sites isn't trying to avoid missed posts - they're just dipping into the stream of sites they're interested in at any given moment.

I am in the same boat and I simply quickly go through the 50-100 posts of the sites per day. I actually open maybe 10% in the browser. Following small sites and blogs about your interests gives you the best quality of the web in my opinion.
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