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Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

blog.newsblur.com

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Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#41

Post by lazugod »

Roritharr wrote: post #7
electic wrote: post #5

I tried out NewsBlur and sadly, Feedly seems leagues better.

Could you atleast describe what is better about Feedly, so not only the creator of NewsBlur, but also anyone looking to spend money on an RSS Solution gets your informed input?

I briefly tried both.

* Feedly has a simple interface which is much more like Google Reader. But it depends on a plugin (or an app) rather than being an allwhere accessible website. Their Kindle Fire app seemed to load content extremely slowly, and its interface wasn't a simple list. And it's free, so I can't be a customer and I don't know how they earn money.

* NewsBlur is complicated and unresponsive. There are a lot of inscrutable unlabeled icons, and I don't understand why an arrow follows the mouse. It's a paid service - I can be a customer - but I don't know how sustainable NewsBlur will be with its current issues and with subscription as its only source of funding.

If NewsBlur seems solid by May, I'll gladly pay them. If Feedly seems less like a faceless data-miner by May, I'll use them.

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#42

Post by tcwc »

UberMouse wrote: post #38
georgeoliver wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does NB fetch feeds that have no new articles?

Doesn't it have to fetch feeds to determine there are no new articles?

Feed readers can send If-Modified-Since or If-None-Match as part of the request so the server only sends back the full feed if there's something new (Otherwise a 304 Not Modified)

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#45

Post by 18pfsmt »

jpwagner wrote: post #19

So far I am not a user of ANY reader. Between googlenews, twitter, and HN I get my daily digest. I would like to try Newsblur but it seems that to get immediate value I have to have been some reader user: I can migrate my googlereader account or upload an OPML file. What I would like to see are different versions of OOTB "skins". I can sign up as an "HN-lover" and it seeds my account with 50 blogs I should follow. Th…

For anyone else not familiar, OOTB == out of the box.

Thank you urban dictionary...

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#46

Post by snogglethorpe »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #37
electic wrote: post #5

I tried out NewsBlur and sadly, Feedly seems leagues better.

I looked at Feedly and Newsblur last week as I look for my eventual Google Reader replacement. Feedly turned me off because it has no open web implementation, it runs through the Chrome web store. Aside from some developer related plugins I refuse to use a completely superfluous wrapper around a website if I am on my PC. I've tried Newsblur but it's just so "busy" (I know where my mouse is on the vertical axis thank…

> Feedly turned me off because it has no open web implementation, it runs through the Chrome web store

Seriously, going to the feedly website, the first thing you're confronted with is a list of platform-specific apps you have to download, and "this website wants to install something, ok?"

There seems little reason for this with today's browsers, and it seems like a very good way to make a large proportion of potential users say "no thanks" before even trying it. I know it made me immediately toss feedly into the discard pile in my reader-replacement search...

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#48

Post by UberMouse »

conesus wrote: post #39
jbigelow76 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at Feedly and Newsblur last week as I look for my eventual Google Reader replacement. Feedly turned me off because it has no open web implementation, it runs through the Chrome web store. Aside from some developer related plugins I refuse to use a completely superfluous wrapper around a website if I am on my PC. I've tried Newsblur but it's just so "busy" (I know where my mouse is on the vertical axis thank…

You should lock that "dorito" that follows your mouse. It allows you to adjust the currently selected story. It's an indicator line. Maybe I should lock it by default and allow you to click on it to have it follow your mouse...

I wasn't aware you could do this. Locking it by default seems like it would make more sense.

Also while I've got you, two issues I've noticed.

1. When I click "All Stories" to refresh my feeds it defaults to listing everything, even though I have it set so I only view one item at a time. As soon as I click the button/arrow to go to the next unread item it shows the first item as it should and everything works fine after that.

2. I seem to run out of items after I've viewed ~20ish and I have to click "All Stories" again to fetch a new bunch

I'm using the dev site if that matters (Issues happen on both sites though). So far these are the only things annoying me and otherwise newsblur is pretty good.

Re: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

#50

Post by codexon »

conesus wrote: post #21
codexon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy seems to be describing a different principle. Microsoft was trying to break the network effect that Lotus had.

I agree it's not a 1-to-1 analogy, but the idea is the same. Knowing you're free to come back to Lotus by using Excel frees you from the chicken-and-egg constraint of waiting until your entire office is on Excel. With NewsBlur you know that you can host your own instance if your dependency on the newsblur.com hosted instance breaks.

I see what you mean by that, but open-sourcing all your software instead of just having an export function seems risky to me.

In our area of business, our features get copied really quickly.

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