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Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

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Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#131

Post by cstross »

joosters wrote: post #95
badideabear wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using The Old Reader (theoldreader.com) which, as the name suggests, is very much like old school reader before they crippled the social features. Sure, it doesn't have a dedicated mobile app, but the mobile site looks pretty nice.

Apps are starting to support it, try using Feedler (on iOS, no idea if there is an Android version)

I thought you were flat-out wrong for a moment, then did some digging: Feedler 2.0 does indeed support Theoldreader, however Feedler Pro (which was what I was squinting at) is still on version 1.12.5, and only supports Google Reader.

As Feedler 2.0 only showed up in the app store yesterday I assume the Pro version is stuck somewhere in the approvals process ...

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#132

Post by krzyk »

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…

And more over it requries a browser plugin (at least for firefox) to even function, why? And most of the time it just doesn't work - keep displaying that it is updating (maybe it doesn't take proxy into account?)

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#133

Post by anon1385 »

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,…

A proper standard for syncing rss? So that, like email, you just have to point your various clients at the address of the sync server you are using. That can be one you run yourself or one from some third party provider. If your provider closes you can just point your clients at the new service, without each client needing to implement a new custom API. You are also free to use whatever client(s) you want. It seems to me like this should have been part of RSS since the beginning.

The web community seems disinterested in developing standards other than presentational ones (HTML/CSS), I guess largely for commercial reasons: the creators of services want to lock you into their specific (magic hip RESTful JSON) API.

Five years ago, if you wanted to show content from one site or app on your own site or app, you could use a simple, documented format to do so, without requiring a business-development deal or contractual agreement between the sites. Thus, user experiences weren’t subject to the vagaries of the political battles between different companies, but instead were consistently based on the extensible architecture of the web itself. -- Anil Dash [1]

[1] http://adactio.com/journal/6291/

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#134

Post by veidr »

anon1385 wrote: post #133
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,…

A proper standard for syncing rss? So that, like email, you just have to point your various clients at the address of the sync server you are using. That can be one you run yourself or one from some third party provider. If your provider closes you can just point your clients at the new service, without each client needing to implement a new custom API. You are also free to use whatever client(s) you want. It seems t…

Yep, you are exactly right, that is the only proper solution.

Like you say, though, the proverbial "community" doesn't seem any closer to building that then they were when Google Reader was created in 2005.

I had hoped that the demise of the proprietary Google Reader would finally inspire the creation of such an open standard, but so far all it seems to have inspired is more crap like Google Reader...

(But, lacking the good solution, I would still pay for another crappy proprietary solution in the meantime.)

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#135

Post by greatquux »

FilterJoe wrote: post #34

While I share the author's frustration that Google Reader is going away, I don't get all the hostility toward Feedly. In just a few months' time, they've replicated by far the most important aspect of Google - serving as a backend for any front end reader that choose to use their API. I too tried the Feedly iOS app and found it didn't suit my workflow and stylistic preferences. But I didn't need it. My favorite way o…

gReader Pro on android has worked pretty darn well now that the bugs have been shaken out. I'd definitely recommend it over the pretty but useless feedly interface.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#136

Post by BitMastro »

I switched to tt-rss last Sunday. I have a cheap VPS that I paid 15$ a year, set up a minimal debian, install nginx and postgresql, let tt-rss import google reader feeds and starred posts and install the mobile app as well. A good looking skin and now I have a nice replacement. Not so difficult

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#137

Post by amirmc »

unimpressive wrote: post #122
amirmc wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I like the idea of having someone else worry about swapping HDDs etc. So I'd want the same thing mirrored (but encrypted) up in the public cloud. I don't want to end up in a situation where all my stuff dies because a disk fails.

>So I'd want the same thing mirrored (but encrypted) up in the public cloud. I don't want to end up in a situation where all my stuff dies because a disk fails. The implied parenthetical there is "(Without your permission)", encrypted backups would be miles ahead of where we're at now in terms of security.

I don't understand what you mean by "without your permission". I'd expect to have all the keys so it would be 'secure' in that sense.

The problem I want to solve is having proper ownership of my stuff without having to do that much more admin. I'd use the cloud as just storage. We're not necessarily that far ahead from having this now as services like tarsnap [1] offer part of what I'm after. I think the missing piece is that no-one's strung the, together into a overall product-offering.

[1] http://www.tarsnap.com

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#138

Post by wmeredith »

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…

Yeah, Feedly's interface can't seem to get out of its own way.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#139

Post by sleepyhead »

Semaphor wrote: post #117
anu_gupta wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Too bad it's ugly and has lots of ux-quirks.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#140

Post by zanny »

firlefans wrote: post #115
icelancer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Folders, drag and drop feeds between them, the caching of entries Google did, and the Android app was ok, and it didn't install some browser crushing plugin to work, it was a website.
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