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Google Reader Alternatives

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Re: Google Reader Alternatives

#21

Post by cake »

patrickmay wrote: post #10

What I find most appealing about Google Reader is the simplicity of the interface. I just want to see a list of the sites I'm following, an indicator when new content is available, a summary of the content, and the ability to view the full content. That's it. Nothing flashy, nothing social, just the Emacs (or even vi) of RSS readers. Newsblur comes closest for me so far, but I suspect I'll end up rolling my own.

What I like about Reader is the speed.

Newsblur feels slow and bloated and of all the RSS readers I have tried it was the best.

So now I just said fuck it and I'm working on my own reader using much of the work from http://rsslounge.aditu.de/

Re: Google Reader Alternatives

#22

Post by webwanderings »

bimozx wrote: post #19
Toshio wrote: post #2

Can anyone point to a full-fledged review of The Old Reader? I could only find first impressions by googling around for a bit.

I've been using it for a few days, but I can only comment on how they present the feeds, since I don't use the social features at all. It's pretty decent, there is no frills and pretty straightforward. If you want an RSS reader with a simple interface, and doesn't impose anything on you, this should be suitable for you. But, there are two huge things that are a turn-off for me. First, I can't set the default homepage…

There is an arrow icon for sorting.

Re: Google Reader Alternatives

#24

Post by chmars »

patrickmay wrote: post #10

What I find most appealing about Google Reader is the simplicity of the interface. I just want to see a list of the sites I'm following, an indicator when new content is available, a summary of the content, and the ability to view the full content. That's it. Nothing flashy, nothing social, just the Emacs (or even vi) of RSS readers. Newsblur comes closest for me so far, but I suspect I'll end up rolling my own.

I agree with your first paragraph. However, I'm still hoping that Reeder will support NewsBlur (or maybe another service) so that I can continue to read my feeds offline. Internet is still not always available (and if available, sometimes only very slow or very expensive). That's why I still appreciate offline reading.

Re: Google Reader Alternatives

#25

Post by webwanderings »

jobigoud wrote: post #8

Can someone point out the features I've been missing all along by using a Desktop RSS reader? Is it just synchronization or is there something else to it?

1. local memory consumption. 2. synchronization between multiple computers.

I am testing quiet-rss. I also tested RSSOwl. In fact I used to use Firefox's Brief a long while ago and I used it for extended period of time. None of these comes close to Google Reader for above mentioned issues. GR just works.

Re: Google Reader Alternatives

#26

Post by officemonkey »

StavrosK wrote: post #14
eertami wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay £10/year for my VPS, I think I spend more on domains. There are many cheap boxes[1] available out there for exactly this kind of purpose. [1]: http://www.lowendbox.com/

Yes, but my time is much, much more expensive. I can't spend hours installing and configuring that stuff, especially when exporting my feeds is easy and fast.

Installing and configuring is time-consuming, but it doesn't have to be.

A teenager can set up and run a minecraft server in 10 min. Calibre and Plex have built-in servers on my home machine to serve ebooks and movies.

Running your own RSS reader server could be as simple as opening an app on your home machine.

Re: Google Reader Alternatives

#27

Post by bimozx »

webwanderings wrote: post #22
bimozx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using it for a few days, but I can only comment on how they present the feeds, since I don't use the social features at all. It's pretty decent, there is no frills and pretty straightforward. If you want an RSS reader with a simple interface, and doesn't impose anything on you, this should be suitable for you. But, there are two huge things that are a turn-off for me. First, I can't set the default homepage…

There is an arrow icon for sorting.

I've tried the arrow icon, and I already tried the "Posts Order" option on settings, but my feeds' items are still not ordered according to the dates. So unless I'm missing something...

Here is an image to shed some more clarity on what I really meant. http://i.imgur.com/1Zb18cc.jpg

Re: Google Reader Alternatives

#28

Post by Semaphor »

maguay wrote: post #12
Semaphor wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honorable mentions this week go out to TinyTinyRSS, a self-hosted RSS reading app that allows you to grab your feeds on any system, as long as you have a web host and you're comfortable installing and setting it up. The process actually isn't that difficult, and full disclosure, I'm thinking about doing this myself. Since there's a Tiny Tiny RSS Android client to go with it, it's worth a look. Plus, it's free and o…

I love Fever, and just switched to it. I included it on my own roundup at Web.AppStorm: http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/rssfeeds/google-reader-is-d... . I think people don't mention self-hosted options as much because most people would immediately think it was too much trouble to run their own service. For someone hosting their own site already, though, it's incredibly simple to host something like this yourself. Su…

The lack of a trial gives Fever a big barrier I think. And from what I've seen in the video it has no way to list feeds in a minimalistic way.

Re: Google Reader Alternatives

#29

Post by Semaphor »

dsr_ wrote: post #18
Semaphor wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honorable mentions this week go out to TinyTinyRSS, a self-hosted RSS reading app that allows you to grab your feeds on any system, as long as you have a web host and you're comfortable installing and setting it up. The process actually isn't that difficult, and full disclosure, I'm thinking about doing this myself. Since there's a Tiny Tiny RSS Android client to go with it, it's worth a look. Plus, it's free and o…

I tried it and found it quite reasonable, even running it from my desktop . Is it as fast as Google Reader? Not quite, but it's not slow enough to be annoying, and certainly not "incredibly slow". Much easier to install than Newsblur. Disclaimer: I'm a sysadmin, not a developer. AMD 2 core 5600+, 8GB, one spinning iron disk with an SSD cache via flashcache, Debian stable, Postgres and Apache and PHP as Debian provide…

For me it was slow enough to be annoying. Though I only installed it local (Windows) on XAMPP and not on my VPS. But considering that my machine isn't too weak (i3, 16gb ram, SSD) I expected more. Pretty much every click took 1-2 seconds.

Re: Google Reader Alternatives

#30

Post by webwanderings »

bimozx wrote: post #27
webwanderings wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an arrow icon for sorting.

I've tried the arrow icon, and I already tried the "Posts Order" option on settings, but my feeds' items are still not ordered according to the dates. So unless I'm missing something... Here is an image to shed some more clarity on what I really meant. http://i.imgur.com/1Zb18cc.jpg

Well, as I mentioned below, they are extremely slow at the moment and they are not even fetching all the feeds on time. I gave them HN's feed yesterday and when I logged in this morning, they were showing me feeds from 10 hours ago. My local RSS aggregater was providing me real-time updates. So perhaps that's where the problem is? I am not sure. As far as I am concerned, if they cannot handle couple of feeds on time, than I don't know how they're going to handle 500 plus feeds that I have.
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