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Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

news.ycombinator.com

71–80 of 140 posts

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#71
I was a heavy GReader user and I settled on Newsblur. It was the closest experience to how I used GReader (uncluttered full screen view, j/k/spacebar to navigate through the list, acceptable and improving android app).

"o" to open the full article in a background tab is pretty useful.

If there was a keyboard shortcut to send to pinboard it would be nearly perfect (for me).

I was initially resistant to paying for something until I realized how much value I get from a hosted RSS reader, $24 a year was a no-brainer.

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#74

Blogtrottr. It sends you an email for every post. Combined with Gmail filters I open my Gmail RSS folder instead of a reader website/app. It sounds bad, but I tried everything, and every single service fails at something, which makes it useless. Sometimes the android app doesnt work or can't be installed in my ancient phone, sometimes the website is unusable, sometimes the reader doesn't have enough crawling power an…

I hadn't thought of that. Email + accessing the mailbox folder over RSS is a pretty clever solution.

A flow like that could also allow you to include updates from sites that don't have RSS feeds, by using a service like http://www.changedetection.com/ that watches websites and sends an email when the site changes.

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#75
None as of yet, though Feedly is the only contender at this point for me. But the big deal breaker is the lack of search (which was present when I initially loaded up my Google Reader subscribed feeds, but the Feedly overlords deactivated when the flood of new users made it a performance issue). It is on the !todo! list so I hope it is restored. Without search, an RSS reader is just not as useful, at least with my volume of subscribed feeds.

Also, skeptical that Feedly will be able to thrive on their own without the Google backend. Hope I am proven dead wrong on this though!

Tried some of the others but they either choked on my subscription import (>3K feeds) or there are serious performance issues. The Old Reader truncated my Google Reader import at the letter 'H'. Yoleo UX locks up on me constantly and every click seems to enact a multi-second delay in response.

Another reader alternative tried was feedwalk.com -- again, like Yoleo, it imported all my feeds, but is plagued by performance issues.

In sum, Feedly is the only viable alternative, but the lack of search limits its value for me.

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#77

I haven't switched yet. What I would like to have is the reader that is basically the same as the old good Google Reader: - be web based - be cross platform (so I can use it on phone and desktop) - be light on network and fast to load - have simple design - should have folders - sort by oldest - mark all as read (in the folder) - be optimized for text, not pictures and that's pretty much all. What it shouldn't have i…

I've been working on this solution and am currently in a closed beta. Will be opening up this/next week over time. http://hivereader.com I meet all your requirements but the cross platform. Once the web API's are locked (aka near the 1st) I am going to start cranking on the mobile app ASAP as well as a public facing api. I also have social but you don't need to use it. (no really, it's barely there).

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#78
post #73

I tried feedly, but I'm not very used to it. I also tried newsblur, the website is very slow, the iphone app seems to be buggy. I'm waiting for digg now. Otherwise, I will build something myself.

Newsblur has gotten much faster in the last month or so and there was a major iOS app release. It's now actually pretty snappy.

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#79

None as of yet, though Feedly is the only contender at this point for me. But the big deal breaker is the lack of search (which was present when I initially loaded up my Google Reader subscribed feeds, but the Feedly overlords deactivated when the flood of new users made it a performance issue). It is on the !todo! list so I hope it is restored. Without search, an RSS reader is just not as useful, at least with my vo…

More than 3k feeds... wow! I get swamped keeping up with < 100 feeds, as nothing predicts (well enough|at all) which articles I want to read, so I have to skim them all.

Re: Poll: Which RSS reader have you switched to?

#80
It's interesting that a lot of these seem to be hosted solutions. I'm surprised people aren't switching to self-hosted webapps or standalone desktop applications. Why aren't people more worried about these services shutting down, even with memories of Reader painfully current?

I can sit back and watch people panic with smug superiority, since I never used Google Reader. I'm currently catching all of the blogosphere's latest and greatest in Mozilla Thunderbird.

Reading the comments, there are a few people who have seen the light, and are switching to (or building) desktop apps or self-hosted web apps.

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