It was the best ever, I haven't found anything even close.
RIP Google Reader
321–330 of 424 posts
Re: RIP Google Reader
#322inoreader.com turned out to be a pretty good replacement.
Re: RIP Google Reader
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too don't get this. I also used Google Reader back then. When iPhone was novel and WiFi spots were rare, so people had to preload a part of the web to get through the day. When they killed it I switched to NetNewsWire and didn't miss the previous product. What was so special about Google Reader?
Since you brought up NetNewsWire, Google Reader had a critical feature back in 2005 that most RSS readers today still lack: you could configure feeds to not just store the RSS but also visit the website to save the full article. I just opened up NetNewsWire and, yup, 99% of my subscriptions are a few sentences and then a "Read more" link which kinda defeats some of the major upsides of an RSS reader. I don't just wan…
I work on a project to transform partial feeds into full-text versions. The idea is you give it the partial feeds URL and subscribe to the feed URL it generates: https://www.fivefilters.org/full-text-rss/
Re: RIP Google Reader
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
In retrospect Reader's death marked a turning point in how Google was perceived. There were grumblings before that but Google was still the darling of the web. As you say, Google+ was consuming Google at that time. So when they killed Reader it was not just killing a beloved service. It also acted like a lightning rod for the discontent that had started to swell. A lot of people would never again view Google through…
Though very disappointed, it is not surprising in retrospect. Google doesn't want to make a niche application for a handful (relatively) of nerds. They want to make unduplicatable AI/big-data services for billion+ users. Anyone can make a feed reader. No one else has been able to create a search engine, translation service, or email service (spam filtering, auto-complete) nearly as good.
Your information is a few years out of date, there is a new translation engine on the market that seems to be objectively better (deepl.com) as well as more GDPR-friendly ;)
The search engine I can't disagree with.
The email service... email is email to me, Google doesn't offer any features that Thunderbird doesn't already have && that I want. If you mean the search function inside of gmail, then yes, but that's kinda also just search. Or if you mean deliverability, that's not a function of skill but a function of being huge and if my mail server does something wrong then nobody is going to believe me if I say it's google's fault and google definitely isn't going to fix it. Or if you mean spam filtering, that's again because they just throw you out (into the spambox, but because google users rarely look there, that's out) and force you to use some (other) bigcorp for delivering just to them. The power that comes with being super huge.
Re: RIP Google Reader
#325As someone who was born too late for Google Reader, I genuinely don't understand why people bring it up every 5 minutes. There are 1000 feed reader apps that exist right now, some of which have the branding of "it's just like Google Reader", so what am I missing here?
They don't miss Reader, they miss college
Re: RIP Google Reader
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
But they didn't even try very hard. G+ didn't event have a way to create events. Google Calendar was on every Android device, it would have been so seamless if you could have create a birthday party or attend a rave in the park and it would be right in your calendar. But no, you could only post stories and pictures. That made for a rather bare-bones social network.
This is a great illustration of the problem G+ had; events in g+ were amazing but nobody (apparently) knew. Setting them up was easy, inviting people was easy, privacy for events made sense from the UI, etc. If you set things up correctly, everyone who was invited would have a shared photo album that they would be able to share pictures to with one click. I have a friend who had an amazing wedding photo album created…
Did people have to have G+ accounts to receive invites? I know Facebook requires it, but if they just used standard calendaring events (maybe with an info link to g+?) that would seem a winner
Re: RIP Google Reader
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Though very disappointed, it is not surprising in retrospect. Google doesn't want to make a niche application for a handful (relatively) of nerds. They want to make unduplicatable AI/big-data services for billion+ users. Anyone can make a feed reader. No one else has been able to create a search engine, translation service, or email service (spam filtering, auto-complete) nearly as good.
Your information is a few years out of date, there is a new translation engine on the market that seems to be objectively better (deepl.com) as well as more GDPR-friendly ;) The search engine I can't disagree with. The email service... email is email to me, Google doesn't offer any features that Thunderbird doesn't already have && that I want. If you mean the search function inside of gmail, then yes, but that's kind…
The problem with “email is email” is that people can’t easily change email addresses, so once in gmail they can’t leave, no matter how egregiously google abuses the data.
Re: RIP Google Reader
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people are trying to build a community here: https://neocities.org/
I can't believe that website is still around. I just got teleported to the 90's.
Neocities isn't that old. Perhaps you're thinking of Geocities, the '90s vintage website that inspired it?
Re: RIP Google Reader
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point a year or two ago I googled around for "best rss reader app" or "best rss news app" looking for android specifically, and I don't remember seeing newsblur talked about anywhere. All of the ones I did try (aggregator, feedly, inoreader, etc) were unsatisfactory in various ways. I just downloaded and tried newsblur and it's pretty much perfect for my taste and needs. Going to try it for a few days then wi…
Finding good applications, especially for Android, is way harder than it should be. Seems like this is a problem worth solving as well.
Being able to search apps by really basic properties is an embarrassing missing feature of google play store.
Re: RIP Google Reader
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's that, but it's also a symbol for how the Web has changed. Google bulldozing Reader in order to clear ground for a (intended) social media behemoth reflects how all sorts of smaller online communities and spaces have been razed or faded away as everything continues to consolidate onto the social media giants.
And it's not just the web. It's everything. Every company in our capitalist utopia just keeps growing and growing. Microsoft is the perfect example. They've bought companies from the start, and never stopped. I still hate that they were allowed to buy GitHub. They will eventually make it supplant their stupid MSDN "devops" thing in their offerings. But if not Microsoft, it just would have been Oracle or Amazon or som…
Not that many people who use Linux are clamoring for it, but it's interesting that GitHub does not provide an official desktop app for Linux -- even though it's a frickin Electron all. And that's totally GitHub's doing.
Meanwhile, at the parent company, Microsoft offets VS Code for Linux. And it's nice.