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Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

jwz.org

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Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#111

Post by veidr » 

    > I have no interest in reading my feeds through 
    > a web site (no more than I would tolerate reading 
    > my email that way, like an *animal*).
I haven't laughed that hard at something I read in a blog post so far this year. And I agree wholeheartedly.

Who gives a shit about Google Reader the website? (Apparently, a whole lot of people... but not me.) I only care about the syncing.

Like Zawinski, I want a fast, awesome, native RSS reader on all my platforms that stays in sync across them. That's it.

I would love to get that for free, but aftern thinking on it a moment, I don't see why anybody would provide that to me for free. Thinking on it a moment more, I realized I would pay some reasonable fee for it.

However, non-free means 99% of people won't use it, and this in turn means that there is much less incentive for the makers of said fast, awesome, native newsreaders to support such a service in their app.

Except that an RSS newsreader that cannot sync is kind of like a dog turd in a bowtie.

An enterprising newsreader maker could bite the bullet and make sync a feature of their app -- but I don't think any of the good newsreader apps cover all the important platforms (for me, Mac, iOS, and Android, but for others Windows and Linux are probably in the mix, too).

So I don't know what the solution is.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#112

Post by unimpressive »

veidr wrote: post #111

> I have no interest in reading my feeds through > a web site (no more than I would tolerate reading > my email that way, like an *animal*). I haven't laughed that hard at something I read in a blog post so far this year. And I agree wholeheartedly. Who gives a shit about Google Reader the website? (Apparently, a whole lot of people... but not me.) I only care about the syncing. Like Zawinski, I want a fast, awesome,…

>So I don't know what the solution is.

Personal cloud. You have a domain name and you host the sync on cheap hardware in your home. For a single application this seems wildly expensive, but if you had a decent ecosystem of apps it'd suddenly be a bargain. This also has secondary benefits like not sending your data to shady 3rd parties.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#113

Post by davidjohnstone »

jacoblyles wrote: post #28

Feedly is an example of an app that is extremely over-designed in a counterintuitive way. It is a remarkable case of form over function. "There's a list of articles, one per line, stacked vertically on the screen. After you've scanned your eyes to the bottom of the screen, how do you see more? You scroll it up, right? Ha ha ha. No. You swipe right. Madness." Oh. THAT'S how you do it. I thought it was impossible to sc…

I definitely agree.

Once made to show full items by default, Feedly became acceptable for how I use a feed reader. However, this option only appears to be available on the desktop site, and not on the Android app, and all the other options feel too weird; the cards and magazine layouts look pretty, but are completely unusable ("I just want to read my feeds!).

Yoleo almost does it for me, except I sorely miss the ability to scroll through a list of unread items (it forces us to hit J or click on the next entry in the third column to make the next item visible).

I find the NewsBlur UI awfully clunky, and I will admit that I can't bring myself to actually using it as the replacement. However, it exposes an API, and I built a much simpler UI for it: http://www.altfeedreader.com/ — it doesn't do everything that NewsBlur can, but it does 99% of what I want in a feed reader.

In the end, I haven't settled on what I will use, and there's still Digg Reader (to be released tomorrow) and AOL Reader (released, but buggy enough to prevent me from adding anything when I tried it).

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#114

Post by nikcub »

We learned a lesson that you can't rely on free services like Reader because they likely will eventually be shut down.

Reeder is now asking for $5 per month so that is can be sustainable, so isn't the solution just to pay the $5 per month rather than asking one of the free products to imitate what you get from a paid product?

You will just be at square one again anyway since even if Feedly does implement all of these changes, you still have a free product that at some point will need to compromise itself through advertising, become a paid product, or shutdown.

I really thought the punchline to this post would be 'and this is why its worth paying $5 per month for Reeder.

Ranting at Feedly to fix their free product seems to miss the point of why we are all in this situation with the Reader shutdown in the first place.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#115

Post by firlefans »

icelancer wrote: post #36
halcyondaze wrote: post #6

Who knows, the demise of Google Reader seems to be spawning a lot of cool projects and Show HN's. I don't think it's the end of the world...seems to be driving forward innovation.

I've tried most. Not a single one has 80% of the usability of Google Reader.

By usability you surely mean something other than the traditional sense of the word. Exactly what was usable about the Reader interface?

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#116

Post by Tichy »

nikcub wrote: post #114

We learned a lesson that you can't rely on free services like Reader because they likely will eventually be shut down. Reeder is now asking for $5 per month so that is can be sustainable, so isn't the solution just to pay the $5 per month rather than asking one of the free products to imitate what you get from a paid product? You will just be at square one again anyway since even if Feedly does implement all of these…

I don't think that's the lesson at all. Even a feed reader that charges 5$/month is more likely to go broke than Google. Charging money doesn't guarantee success.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#117

Post by Semaphor »

anu_gupta wrote: post #67
snogglethorpe wrote: post #46

I don't really share most of jwz's specific complaints, but I've been trying to use feedly, and boy .... it's really hard to believe so many people are recommending this as a general Google reader replacement. Besides its somewhat quirky UI, the main problem I have with feedly is that it seems predicated on the assumption that you will more or less read through all articles, one by one, in order, and finish them. Tha…

The closest replacement is The Old Reader - unfortunately they seem to having problems with feed update speed (probably due to load)

My favorite, Newsblur, has pretty much everything GReader had. And by now he even managed to do away with the performance problems.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#118

Post by amirmc »

nikcub wrote: post #114

We learned a lesson that you can't rely on free services like Reader because they likely will eventually be shut down. Reeder is now asking for $5 per month so that is can be sustainable, so isn't the solution just to pay the $5 per month rather than asking one of the free products to imitate what you get from a paid product? You will just be at square one again anyway since even if Feedly does implement all of these…

Does anyone know for sure that $5 is actually sustainable? Just because it's non-zero doesn't automatically mean it'll be around for the long run.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#119

Post by conradfr »

shrikant wrote: post #79
btilly wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me. I have never watched much TV, skip most movies, and am unable to play any first shooter from Doom onwards without getting motion sick. Plus I think that I should respect copyrights. Let me turn it around. What true nerd would consider consumption of mass market media a defining characteristic of nerdom? As opposed to, say, burying your nose in a math text for fun?

> [...] am unable to play any first shooter from Doom onwards without getting motion sick. Wow, I thought this was just me! This prevents me from playing even the good stuff like Portal, which is a terrible pity.

Try increasing the FOV.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#120

Post by amirmc »

skarmklart wrote: post #98
r00fus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One imagines they felt they were leaving too much on the table, or that they felt the counterparty (ie, us users) didn't value it as much as they did their lost opportunities.

Personally, GR is one of few services that I would have gladly paid $100/year for. They should at least have asked us users if we wanted to pay for the service in exchange for letting it live on.

Even then, there probably aren't enough of you to make it worthwhile (and you're not a growing market). Keeping things free gives the provider tremendous leeway to do as they please.
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