Live data from Hacker News

O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

theawl.com

31–40 of 187 posts

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#32

There are decent readers out there. Liferea or Thunderbird will do in a pinch, and much as I hate to admit it, Netvibes is actually superb. The tragedy isn't some Google tool being retired, the tragedy is the way feeds are slowly disappearing. It's a slow and creeping death, but it's a death. More and more sites are dropping their feeds and replacing them with some twitterish Facebook nonsense. [edit: typo]

You meant:

More and more sites are dropping their feeds and replacing them with their stupid 'sign up via email to receive updates' nonsense.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#33

There are decent readers out there. Liferea or Thunderbird will do in a pinch, and much as I hate to admit it, Netvibes is actually superb. The tragedy isn't some Google tool being retired, the tragedy is the way feeds are slowly disappearing. It's a slow and creeping death, but it's a death. More and more sites are dropping their feeds and replacing them with some twitterish Facebook nonsense. [edit: typo]

I've been using Facebook to subscribe to websites mainly because I know I'll check Facebook more often. I keep forgetting to check my Feedly account.

However I've discovered that after liking a few pages and joining a few groups the quality of information in my Facebook news feed is getting watered down. I'm missing more of my friends updates.

Currently my Facebook feed has a duel personality which makes it a bit useless.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#34
> Not one of those alternatives is good enough, because they’re just not the same.

So what is the problem exactly? Is it really that hard to make a good reader?

Personally I don't really care. My Reader list was so bloated I never had time to go through anything. Just speculating but could it be that many people were like me, using Reader out of habit? So when it disappeared it didn't really matter much because algorithms and aggregators had already replaced it. That could explain why none of the alternatives really took off but I don't know.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tragedy isn't some Google tool being retired, the tragedy is the way feeds are slowly disappearing Can't it be both? They probably contribute to each other too.

Yeah, the Reader retirement probably did a lot of damage. But nothing fundamental, I believe. Feeds are dying from lack of interest. The proverbial 'general public' never could be bothered to spend those ten extra minutes getting to understand that orange icon with the stripes. Go out there and ask. Say "feed" to everybody. 99 percent of them will give you a blank stare in return. "What's the problem? We got Facebook…

> The proverbial 'general public' never could be bothered to spend those ten extra minutes getting to understand that orange icon with the stripes

Eh, the general public didn't care about smartphones for awhile either (email on blackberry? who needs it?)

The same can be said for VR right now, I think

RSS never got its chance. Google Reader seemed to have growth until it was killed

Google could win a little bit of confidence back from the dev community if they brought it back. I wonder how much it would cost them.

Admitting your mistakes is nothing to be ashamed of. When big companies do it and provide what their most passionate users (computer/tech addicts) want, it shows strength, not weakness.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#36

There are decent readers out there. Liferea or Thunderbird will do in a pinch, and much as I hate to admit it, Netvibes is actually superb. The tragedy isn't some Google tool being retired, the tragedy is the way feeds are slowly disappearing. It's a slow and creeping death, but it's a death. More and more sites are dropping their feeds and replacing them with some twitterish Facebook nonsense. [edit: typo]

Google Reader had a very important social aspect as well

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#37
post #20

The Reader workflow never really worked for me. I just ended up with a big bold "unread" number counting all the posts I'd never get round to reading. In the end I rolled my own thing ( http://www.mailfeed.io ) which checks feeds once a day and emails me a list of all new posts. Really simple, and nothing to make me feel guilty about not keeping up.

I kinda did exactly the same. Rolled my own: http://www.weegeeks.com

It doesn't keep a history of feeds, just what's in the feed right now. That way I don't get backlogged.

I don't recommend anyone use it though, it's very tailored to my lightweight requirements. It's actually got about 200+ registered users, but only one of those (other than me) is active...

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#38

There are decent readers out there. Liferea or Thunderbird will do in a pinch, and much as I hate to admit it, Netvibes is actually superb. The tragedy isn't some Google tool being retired, the tragedy is the way feeds are slowly disappearing. It's a slow and creeping death, but it's a death. More and more sites are dropping their feeds and replacing them with some twitterish Facebook nonsense. [edit: typo]

Google Reader had a very important social aspect as well

People keep forgetting this. Google Reader was the best social network for academically minded people that I have ever been part of. As one blogger after it's shutdown said: it was a social network for people who don't want to talk about themselves

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#39
post #21

There are decent readers out there. Liferea or Thunderbird will do in a pinch, and much as I hate to admit it, Netvibes is actually superb. The tragedy isn't some Google tool being retired, the tragedy is the way feeds are slowly disappearing. It's a slow and creeping death, but it's a death. More and more sites are dropping their feeds and replacing them with some twitterish Facebook nonsense. [edit: typo]

Twitter used to provide an RSS feed, that's gone too.

I have no idea why you're being downvoted but what you say is true. And having to find workarounds to get twitter pushed to me at my laptop is very annoying.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#40

I've been using http://theoldreader.com ever since. As the name implies, it does a pretty good job of mimicking Google Reader.

I wrote my own reader after giving feedly a brief try https://github.com/urandom/readeef Though it only fits my needs
Post reply on HN