Live data from Hacker News

Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

jwz.org

191–200 of 274 posts

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#191
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…

What's the source of that $5/month claim? It's not on Reeder's site or twitter - is there another place that's come out? Not calling your statement into question or anything, just very disappointed to find that out...

Reeder is replacing syncing to Google Reader with Synching to Feedbin, which costs $2 per month

The complaint about iPhone is also only short term, since the team is working on adapting the other apps to use Feedbin as well before the shutdown date.

I think Feedbin was $5 per month and have discounted the price because of all the refugees being anticipated.

In short, OP can continue what he was previously doing, only now it would cost $2 per month rather than free. He wanted them to store the sync information somewhere free, like Dropbox, rather than Feedbin

Relevant links:

https://feedbin.me/

http://reederapp.com/reader/

I think I am just going to signup for Feedbin, I haven't really been able to adapt to using Feedly

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#192
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…

What's the source of that $5/month claim? It's not on Reeder's site or twitter - is there another place that's come out? Not calling your statement into question or anything, just very disappointed to find that out...

Yeah - particularly since reeder syncing is now via feedbin which is 2$ a month. Which makes this service 84$ a year. A bit steep in my opinion - particularly the reeder part.

I'm willing to pay up front for software that runs on my phone, but I'm not sure I'd pay 60$ for reeder, and making it a subscription, for a non-hosted service, would be a deal breaker for me.

Hopefully this report is inaccurate/mistaken in some way.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#193
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about something as simple as reusing IMAP for RSS?

I actually hacked up a feed-horfer that populated an IMAP account some years ago. IMAP gets you like 90% of the way there. There's no facility for updating items, that was about the only thing really wrong with it from the end user perspective, assuming you are okay with storing the full text of tens of thousands of items when you will only read 2% of them. But I don't see anything wrong with that in an era where eve…

It seems like it gets you far enough. A custom IMAP client can just not download anything locally (just grab the headers and cache content of anything you've read), plus UI niceties (click on header to navigate to page). IMAP allows you to use this reader on platforms where no friendly client exists yet.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open Office has seized control of the document suite. Any day now Microsoft is going out of business, and the GIMP is about to destroy Photoshop... Bottom line is if there is a real market for something and someone makes a better product.

Your analogy sucks and you could have easily fixed it: "If Microsoft gave Office away, destroyed the competition, then killed Office..." Google killed Reader and trust.

My comparison is simply that someone built a solid product and gave it away. Yes, people still pay hundreds of dollars for the same software when Open/Libre Office will work for most people.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#195

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)

I've really enjoyed using Feedbin.me. They have a three column layout and keyboard commands. Makes it easy to read. Feedbin is web based, but they have an API that I can sync with Press on my phone.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What about something as simple as reusing IMAP for RSS?

That... actually sounds like a fantastic idea. One folder per feed, you could read your feeds with your email client. Interesting...

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#197
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I leave thousands of things left unread, and yet google reader makes it quite easy to keep up to date with whatever I feel like reading at the moment, without getting bogged down by all the stuff I don't want to read. It lets me categorize stuff hierarchically, and then drill down to what I want to look at, and maintains unread counts for each level, easily visible all at once. It's easy to see what categories/subc…

If Google were smart, they'd open-source Reader and let the people who love it maintain and run it (It's probably much too dependent on their architecture for this to actually be a viable option).

If Google were smart, they'd open-source Reader and let the people who love it maintain and run it (It's probably much too dependent on their architecture for this to actually be a viable option).

So.. if they were smart they'd do something that's impossible, you're saying.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#198

Interestingly, the guy who wrote NetNewsWire says Dropbox and RSS readers can't work together: http://inessential.com/2011/10/25/why_just_store_the_app_dat...

Thank you for that link. It's very interesting. I'm working on a protocol for brass reader that is similar to what he describes. It uses a shared filesystem like dropbox as the communication medium but it is a change set based protocol. I'm still not sure if it's going to work, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#199
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the source of that $5/month claim? It's not on Reeder's site or twitter - is there another place that's come out? Not calling your statement into question or anything, just very disappointed to find that out...

Reeder is replacing syncing to Google Reader with Synching to Feedbin, which costs $2 per month The complaint about iPhone is also only short term, since the team is working on adapting the other apps to use Feedbin as well before the shutdown date. I think Feedbin was $5 per month and have discounted the price because of all the refugees being anticipated. In short, OP can continue what he was previously doing, only…

I ended up choosing Feedbin after looking at the alternatives. I didn't really want something "innovative". I rather enjoy my workflow. Their web client is pretty decent, and somewhat resembles my favorite native app, Reeder. When Reeder updates, I'll happily continue to pay Feedbin to serve as the backend for sync only.

Re: Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh

#200
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually hacked up a feed-horfer that populated an IMAP account some years ago. IMAP gets you like 90% of the way there. There's no facility for updating items, that was about the only thing really wrong with it from the end user perspective, assuming you are okay with storing the full text of tens of thousands of items when you will only read 2% of them. But I don't see anything wrong with that in an era where eve…

It seems like it gets you far enough. A custom IMAP client can just not download anything locally (just grab the headers and cache content of anything you've read), plus UI niceties (click on header to navigate to page). IMAP allows you to use this reader on platforms where no friendly client exists yet.

Oh yeah, totally; by having to "download all the items" I meant on the server. Assuming your were importing feed to an IMAP server that you owned, and reading feeds with a standard IMAP mail client. (Sounds kludgey, but really did work better than 90% of solutions to date.)

But if you mean a provider providing IMAP access to RSS feeds, that could work great. I don't know how to deal with updated items, but there is probably a way, especially if you had a custom client for key platforms. And 2nd tier platforms could still use an IMAP mail client.

Ok! Great idea, so... Somebody: go!!

Post reply on HN