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Google Reader shutting down

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Re: Google Reader shutting down

#661

Post by mkr-hn »

Semaphor wrote: post #366
signed0 wrote: post #44

While I am an avid Google Reader user, I think this is good news. Their product has stagnated over the past few years, yet few competitors emerged. Hopefully this creates a void that a better service or set of services can fill.

Sadly most of the services fill a different niche. Feedly and so on are all magazines but not what I consider real RSS readers. I've read though this Thread, the Reddit threads and through some "Reader Alternatives" articles. The only things similar seem to be The Old Reader and Newsblur.

Feedly has a very familiar view for Reader users: http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/tips-for-google-reader-use...

I've been using that view since the Reader announcement prompted me to give Feedly a second look. Works perfectly.

Re: Google Reader shutting down

#662

Post by jason_slack »

mikestew wrote: post #485
jason_slack wrote: post #304

For OS X users that use Apple Mail it supports RSS Feeds. Not sure about Outlook 2012 for Mac though...

Sadly, that went away in Mountain Lion.

oh, geez. I am on 10.8 but I dont use Apple Mail and I was going to go back to it solely for OS X.

Re: Google Reader shutting down

#663

Post by egh »

sigil wrote: post #446
klausa wrote: post #2

That's the first Google service shutdown that I'm affected by. Sad to see it go. What do you guys recommend for replacement? I know about NewsBlur [1], but I never liked it that much. I think I'm just looking for something that would emulate Reader's full-screen view as close as possible. [1] http://newsblur.com edit: Here's what I consider an absolute must-have in RSS app: - complete navigation with keyboard (j/k pr…

Based on your must-have list, a good low-tech solution might be an RSS to email gateway. Then your mail client becomes your RSS client. Gmail has j/k key bindings, is relatively unadorned, and facilitates your skim / skip workflow. Excerpts might require some work, but perhaps you could coerce them into the subject line. Aaron Swartz wrote a nice RSS to email gateway btw: http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/ I have…

I'm surprised more people don't do this. It's pretty easy to set up.

Here's a little bit I wrote about using rss2email + emacs. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/HOWTOReadFeedsInEmacsViaEmail

Re: Google Reader shutting down

#664

Post by rdl »

xentronium wrote: post #519
rdl wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG is essentially passthrough to Google/Bing/Blekko, though, so you're still somewhat exposed to the risk of those companies being crazy. Although I guess 3 is enough that DDG should be able to survive even if 1-2 go crazy or die. It's perhaps somewhat nationalist, but Russian companies are slightly above Chinese companies on my list of "would I want my traffic going through their infrastructure", from a privacy/inf…

My vouch wouldn't probably mean much, but yandex are by and large not-evil guys. They can be forced to abide the law, but I believe they haven't willfully done anything really unethical yet. Unfortunately, yandex search is inferior to google for English queries, which diminishes their usefulness a lot.

I tend to trust almost all techies by default, but their government, not so much. The same thing applies to the US, though, although at least in the US there's enough precedent from pre-2001 or pre-1990s to restrain the government slightly. Russia and China don't have the extended period of relative legal sanity the US had from ~1781 to sometime in the 1900s, or common law tradition from England from 1300 onward.

Re: Google Reader shutting down

#665

Post by k3n »

anon1385 wrote: post #582

One more for the list of killed Google services: Code Search, Google Search API (twice), Google Video, Wave, Buzz, Google Labs, Google Desktop, Google Notebook, Google Sets, Google Squared, Google Catalogs, Google Answers, Audio Ads, Google Base, Browser Sync, City Tours, Click-to-Call, Google Dashboard Widgets, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Google Mashup Editor, Google Directory, GOOG-411, Joga Bonito, Aardvark, Lively, Music T…

Wow, at first I was thinking that this was their first shutdown that really affected me, but looking at your list there's many other services that I really enjoyed and utilized very frequently.

* Code Search -- how did I forget this awesome tool? What an invaluable, educational, and fun tool that was.

* Google Video -- somewhat redundant with YouTube, but I always felt Video had a place in that it seemed to be much more liberal than YT and also allowed larger uploads.

* Google Desktop -- ok, this one did hurt. My primary use for it was to search my Outlook mail at work (f'g Outlook search is the worst I've ever seen in any product). Now I'm back to never being able to find an email...

* Google Notebook -- a very awesome online clipbook / personal wiki. I still miss it.

* GOOG-411 -- I still miss this service too. Going online is just too slow and tedious, not to mention impossible and/or illegal when you're driving (whereas hitting a speeddial for GOOG-411 was quick and easy). And no, the "voice search" on my phone is not the same, not even close.

* Google Health -- this was a very neat service that I think was ahead of its time, and I didn't use it much (as I didn't have many health issues at the time), but as I age, I'm wishing more & more I had a centralized location to store my medical history on my terms.

* Google Dictionary -- another tool I used on a daily basis. At least there's an official extension[1] that I can use in its place that is functionally equivalent (for my uses); just turn off the pop-ups and invoke it manually from the button.

Pretty scary how many of my tools and services that I came to rely on were shuttered; however, I think the powering down of Reader will impact me the most.

1. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-dictionary-...

Re: Google Reader shutting down

#666

Post by fakeer »

If one think devs must learn from this development, that would be - go for an open standard now. The way Rackspace is doing with OpenStack for cloud. Similarly sth for feed sync/tag etc - where a services changes with an URL and few more things like an UUID etc. Devs in this field might be having a better picture of this.

I just want sth like email. Like currently I host my mails with Google Apps with my domain but I can take it to my VPS any minute and my email will still be up and will keep syncing to my desktop/mobile clients without a problem. Or maybe I would shift to some free provider like ABC, XYZ etc.

Re: Google Reader shutting down

#667

Post by jhales »

sachingulaya wrote: post #558
recuter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is often asked of startup founders 'what if Google starts doing what you do?', a valid question. Perhaps it is worth contemplating products too small for Google to concern themselves with, ones they might abandon, that would still be an attractive opportunity for the rest of us. I've been rooting for you and recall enjoying the blog posts about its making - I've always figured that "RSS is dead" and there is no lo…

Similarly, who are customers that are neglected by the big players? In my industry merchant accounts are very difficult to come by. We are considered high risk. Even with a year of processing records showing 1 chargeback out of >3k transactions I can't get access to a merchant with decent rates(currently paying 3.7%). All the big players turn us away. There's gold to be mined off the beaten path.

Which industry is this?

Re: Google Reader shutting down

#668

Post by levesque »

crucialfelix wrote: post #373

bastards. they never seem to realize how much they damage our trust with these actions. it effects all of their future products. I don't trust them anymore. anyway feedly has a replacement coming soon: http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/ > We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedl…

I've made the switch to feedly as well, and so far I must say it has been a pleasant experience. Everything was set-up and imported in a few clicks, and the general usage experience is also pretty smooth. I got rid of the useless default interface, replaced it by compact lists. I can say I'm happy with the state of things for now.

Re: Google Reader shutting down

#669

Post by at-fates-hands »

patrickk wrote: post #608
boyter wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I certainly do. I have been working on it, but Koders and Ohloh are pretty established so its a long climb. I think the .de domain might be hurting a little bit too. Happy to listen to any actionable items that can address this though.

Check out the periodic table of SEO: http://searchengineland.com/seotable Kalzmeus on SEO (click around his blog for more, guy's a genius): http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ Also some quick, simple advice: 1. Blog 2/3 times per week minimum. Target a single, relevant keyword per blog post (relevant to your domain). The post title, H1s, H2s etc, image tags should all contain your primary keyword. Blog p…

Being successful at SEO is almost the same as starting your own company. Any one of these is a full-time proposition.

I would seek out professional SEO company's and try to find the best deal. No way anybody could do all this stuff by themselves. In the end, it will be a worthwhile investment. From my own experience it's very time consuming to get it right.

Re: Google Reader shutting down

#670

Post by EduardoBautista »

lftl wrote: post #643
coldpie wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried having my own domain's mail for a while, and got burned hard when my (cheap) webhost's servers were down for a couple of days. It's hard to argue with free, easy, and reliable when the alternative is costly, difficult, and more likely to go down.

You don't have to host the email yourself. Just grab your own domain, set up a free gmail account, and forward all the email from your domain to the gmail account. Configure gmail to always send replies as from you@yourdomain.com. What this does is eliminate the biggest point of lock-in to gmail. In the worst case scenario you can switch to another email provider with the flick of a DNS entry, no worries about losing…

I switched to http://domains.live.com from google apps for my personal email. The new outlook.com is a LOT cleaner than Gmail.
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