I would have though ICQ or MSN messenger would have been the first one mentioned. Did you end up on Yahoo because all of your friends/contacts were on it?
There was a discussion the other day that the Bump team merged into Google Photos, which is certainly a creditable application, but not maybe as distinctive as Bump was.
Sort of tragic that the company folded, could have been a nice lifestyle app for someone I think.
Before they added the POSIX layer and got desperate. Their OO framework the entire OS supported was amazing, but POSIX just meant it was another also-ran:
Oh, look, we can run GIMP too... great Be, bravo... sigh
There is a "halfbacked" function on the mobile phone (ios only?) version which is "Explore". It seems to be curated by editors. Would be interesting to have something based on your consumption or subscriptions.
It ticks me off to this day. I can’t imagine it being terribly difficult to maintain, particularly with Google’s limitless resources. They burned so much good will with their developer base just to save a few bucks.
It would have been amazing if instead of having Google Plus be an entirely separate thing, they had added Google Plus's sharing and discussion features onto Google Reader and grown from that as a base. Something like that could very well still be a thriving product today.
They did it before Buzz, it was the bookmarklet and RSS item sharing and discussion features built into Google Reader. Even had rudimentary friend-of-friend-only visibility for shared articles and discussions.
I'm gonna say Reader was like a dysfunctional relationship for me, once they shut it down and I had to move on (currently using newsblur.com) I saw how good an actively devoped RSS app could be
Honestly, ever since Reader was killed I have way more free time on my hands. Maybe it was my poor time management but it was a time hole for me, I'm actually glad that, at the time, nothing as good was around to make me stick on the endless RSS feeds I was subscribed.
I have the opposite issue: I love newsblur so much, because I can fast forward through RSS feeds and read them quickly, which means I don't have to keep going to the sites.
Yes this. When I started listening to podcasts years ago, Reader was my primary tool. When Google announced the pending shutdown, I screenshot every part of the app so that I could rebuild it from scratch if needed one day.
I'm sure there were many reasons it died, but my theory is that Google strategically wanted to kill it because the User was in control of the data-sources and the algorithm. Google wanted people to migrate to Google+, News, etc. where they control what you see.
This is what Facebook and Twitter did. Their feeds used to be a simple chrono sort of sources you determined, but then they slowly took control.
In my mind, all these companies have shifted from being Platforms to being Publishers. While they aren't writing the content, they are actively choosing what content you see and don't see, i.e. being the Editor.
I can't figure out what I've read up to on Twitter anymore since it shuffles tweets around and inserts random "your follower also follows this person" tweets which I didn't ask for
Have you tried using Tweetdeck? It puts that kind of stuff in a separate column which you can show or hide as you wish. The main column is chronological.
If you turn off the "show the best tweets first" option in your content preferences you get a chronological timeline back. (They made this change a month or two ago)
I think this might be right, but this could be because it was an thus an awful interface for anyone who wasn't somewhat along the HN-user spectrum of technical nous.
Seconded. With Google reader, I never really was a fan of their web interface and preferred the Feeddemon desktop client. Sadly it was discontinued after the death of GReader. Switched to Inoreader since then and I must say the web interace is much more to my liking.
I was going to say Google Reader too but have just reconsidered. I do miss it, and the idea that this was a popular way to consume news / content etc.
However I can still use RSS on feedly, inoreader and a bunch of self-hosted alternatives. By moving away from Google I am also escaping their all-seeing eye, albeit to some minor extent.
In the time since Google retired Reader I have begun to see them as a negative presence in the world. I have moved from Gmail and Google Calendar to Fastmail, self-host my contacts and will move on from Android as soon as Ubuntu Touch or another alternative become fully featured enough.
check out theoldreader.com. They suck at marketing but it's essentially a clone of Google Reader. Really surprised it is not as well known as the other guys.
What did Google Reader do that something like Newsblur doesn't? I transitioned from Reader to Newsblur before Reader was killed and have been happy ever since.
I use Feedly now but miss Google Reader. It was a great way to follow the Internet chronologically and could have been developed much further from that point of view.
Nowadays you are supposed follow the Internet randomly, based on whatever you happen to see in social media by chance or curated by algorithms. It’s not a good way to get a balanced view.
I tried switching to gmail after I heard the news. Terrible experience. Wound up deleting a bunch of emails I had archived from Inbox. Switched back, I hope the sunset is a long ways off
There are alternatives to Google Inbox (Spark, Superhuman - that I just discover) but I don't want to add a third-party that can read my emails.
Given that Inbox is sunsetting and the trust issues I have with Google in general, it's the first time since I created my Gmail account that I'm considering moving to something different.
If Fastmail or Protonmail had the Inbox features such as Snooze and grouping of emails with the quick "Archive", I wouldn't hesitate a second.
Have you dug into the settings? I hated the change too, but found that the aspects I most hated (mostly the hover buttons that made everything jump around when used with the preview pane) were configurable.
The aspect I most hate is the load time. Takes about 6 seconds to start displaying emails. Is there something to be done about that? (Note: I'm using Firefox on a Mac.) I've been mostly using the "basic HTML" version, which loads in less than a second.
I'm using Firefox on Windows 10. Loads in about 1.5s for me. Obviously it'll depend on PC and internet connection. I would try it with addons disabled though. (Restart with addons disabled / in safe mode in the help menu.) In the past I've found misbehaved addons (particularly the god-awful skype one that used to always force install itself) would bring gmail to a crawl.
amen, I'm still limping along with it on Windows 10 but nothing else compares at all for managing your original photos. (I also use Google photos but that is a recompressed jpeg copy of your original)
Even if you pay for storage and upload in full quality, it re-jpegifies it?
I use Google Photos, but only the free, "high quality" uploads. I keep all the high res versions on my home server (backed up of course) and just use GP for viewing remotely, search, and its assistant features.
We're slowly getting closer, https://textile.photos/ our desktop app is in a readonly state in the github builds but the mobile app is coming along quickly. Follow here for progress updates, https://github.com/textileio/textile-go, it's where the desktop app is released.
I'd have no problem with self-promotion if they were also joining the larger discussion on the state of photo managers and talking about their frustrations with Picasa/Apple Photos/etc. I mean you'd think if you're building a photo manager you have to care about them at least a little bit.
Would you pay for an end to end solution? Have had it at the back of my mind for a while. No Google. No Apple. No cloud.
But all other features from machine learning like face and scene detection, convenient cataloguing, and probably apps across devices that'll help you store and access all of this centrally backed up on your own NAS.
So would you pay for it?
Probably, maybe after a while, depending on the price. (My budget is often stretched thin.)
Less than USD 20 and a convincing web page or demo instance: immediately, without even trying it first, if for nothing else then to support a good idea.
Less than USD 50, same rules as above + convince me you are going stick around: once I have some spare cash and after trying your demo.
More than USD 100: you have to convince me.
I'll also be happy to pay reasonable amounts for feature keys etc as they become available.
I'm more hesitant to anything that stops working if I can't pay subscription for a month but in some cases like the old WhatsApp it was a no brainer because of the low cost and low friction.
Edit:
ways to mess it up even if the product is otherwise perfect:
- Windows only or Mac only (I'm primarily a Linux user.)
- Chrome only. (I always was a Firefox guy, but it is now at the point were I actively avoid Chrome)
Ahhh, the memories of spending after-school hours buying and selling silos for extra money (there was some thinko in the game logic - full silo was sold for more money than it cost to build, or something like that) in their first C&C game to build a massive army and crush the AI opponent. :)
The trouble was that if you had many silos, when you built a new one, it got filled with tiberium from other silos and I think that when you sold the tiberium would get redistributed back to the other silos. Anyway, all I remember is that you could generate free money just by buying and selling silos in a loop (if you already had many silos and they were full).
It's amazing that webOS pretty much nailed multitasking on mobile years ago. It took Android and iOS several years to copy the cards interface, and even then it's a half baked implementation.
Definitely Palm, the Palm Pre, and that tablet that I so hoped for, but never got my hands on.
The whole system was amazing, the phone was amazing, Enyo was amazing.
The whole company had charme and a great product and a great outlook. Up until HP came by and smashed them into pieces...
Scrolled through a lot of other comments to find this one.
Palm Pre was the first true smart phone I ever owned and I still maintain it was the best - way ahead of its time with the card interface and all you needed to code apps was HTML/CSS/JS.
I am super jealous of the other timeline where someone else (or no one) bought Palm and they continued developing WebOS and releasing it on new hardware for the last 10 years.
But they get worse every generation. Sometimes they undo something horrible (like when they replaced the function keys with a touch strip on the X1 Carbon, or got rid of the track pad mouse buttons), but other mistakes remain (like changing the keyboard to the same style as everyone else, instead of the Selectric Typewrite shaped keys). And they used to be the poster child for good Linux support, but that's starting to drift away also (things like the fingerprint reader).
I got an X1 Yoga (2017 model) last year, and if I can't use bluetooth headphones while on wifi under Linux. Soon as audio starts playing, the wifi will cut out. Problem doesn't occur under Windows. (This is with the latest Fedora, haven't tried other distros yet).
The problem goes away if I switch the wifi to a 5GHZ band, however that isn't an option except at home.
I bought a Pebble Time Round just before Pebble went under. I honestly think it's the best smartwatch made yet. Nothing matches it in terms of aesthetics and functionality for me.
I still use a Pebble SE almost two years in. The original pebble was painful to wear due to it's bulkiness, but the SE was getting into the right dimensions and weight - paired with a light woven watchband I'm comfortable wearing it during day and sleep.
Impressions Games. Made the Caesar, Lords of the Realm, and Civil War General series of games. I put thousands of hours in on those games. Most of them are now on GoG, but my favorite, Civil War Generals 2, is still not, and is very fiddly to get working on modern OSs.
I really miss AIM. It's great having real-time conversations with people you know are online. Facebook Messenger is similar, but it doesn't fill quite the same need.
I think that feeling has more to do with the way people used the internet than it does with AIM itself. Nobody "goes online" any more. Now we're always online, so it's less special.
1,077 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 456 ms ] threadI'm pretty sure Google bought them, and I was hoping they would actually do something with the technology, but nothing ever came of it.
Sort of tragic that the company folded, could have been a nice lifestyle app for someone I think.
[+] https://i.imgur.com/aJC5NK1.jpg
https://www.haiku-os.org/
Maybe killing Reader was a means to an ends.
https://quiterss.org/
So maybe Google did the world a favour by binning Reader.
I used Feedly for a while, but I pretty much abandoned my RSS fix after the demise of Reader.
I'm sure there were many reasons it died, but my theory is that Google strategically wanted to kill it because the User was in control of the data-sources and the algorithm. Google wanted people to migrate to Google+, News, etc. where they control what you see.
This is what Facebook and Twitter did. Their feeds used to be a simple chrono sort of sources you determined, but then they slowly took control.
In my mind, all these companies have shifted from being Platforms to being Publishers. While they aren't writing the content, they are actively choosing what content you see and don't see, i.e. being the Editor.
I think this might be right, but this could be because it was an thus an awful interface for anyone who wasn't somewhat along the HN-user spectrum of technical nous.
I have been using https://elytra.app recently. Pretty happy so far (iOS only at the moment, but the developer is working on a web version)
Nowadays you are supposed follow the Internet randomly, based on whatever you happen to see in social media by chance or curated by algorithms. It’s not a good way to get a balanced view.
There are alternatives to Google Inbox (Spark, Superhuman - that I just discover) but I don't want to add a third-party that can read my emails.
Given that Inbox is sunsetting and the trust issues I have with Google in general, it's the first time since I created my Gmail account that I'm considering moving to something different.
If Fastmail or Protonmail had the Inbox features such as Snooze and grouping of emails with the quick "Archive", I wouldn't hesitate a second.
BlackBerry 10 devices with physical keyboards.
I use Google Photos, but only the free, "high quality" uploads. I keep all the high res versions on my home server (backed up of course) and just use GP for viewing remotely, search, and its assistant features.
Here's an old discussion of the slow refining behavior (to view a JPG) https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/picasa/-XPN4e...
Thanks 'herf.
* https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism
* https://github.com/hooram/ownphotos
Less than USD 20 and a convincing web page or demo instance: immediately, without even trying it first, if for nothing else then to support a good idea.
Less than USD 50, same rules as above + convince me you are going stick around: once I have some spare cash and after trying your demo.
More than USD 100: you have to convince me.
I'll also be happy to pay reasonable amounts for feature keys etc as they become available.
I'm more hesitant to anything that stops working if I can't pay subscription for a month but in some cases like the old WhatsApp it was a no brainer because of the low cost and low friction.
Edit:
ways to mess it up even if the product is otherwise perfect:
- Windows only or Mac only (I'm primarily a Linux user.)
- Chrome only. (I always was a Firefox guy, but it is now at the point were I actively avoid Chrome)
https://www.haagendazs.us/products/retired-flavors/
Friendly's Maple Walnut
real chocolate chips (irregular broken fragments) in Breyer's Mint Chocolate Chip
generally, ice cream without emulsifiers and thickeners
Check this out btw (Red Alert 2):
https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA
C&C Red Alert 2 and C&C Generals were the best RTS games ever made, hands-down. Much of my life was spent playing these games.
Absolutely the best BT earphones I've ever used-- and I've owned about 25 pairs in my life.
Palm Pre was the first true smart phone I ever owned and I still maintain it was the best - way ahead of its time with the card interface and all you needed to code apps was HTML/CSS/JS.
I am super jealous of the other timeline where someone else (or no one) bought Palm and they continued developing WebOS and releasing it on new hardware for the last 10 years.
The problem goes away if I switch the wifi to a 5GHZ band, however that isn't an option except at home.
Lenovo has become so bad that Linux-oriented shops have started pivoting to Dells.
I want to trust them, they make better machines than Dell. But I feel like I’d be lying to myself if I did.
If you want a Pebble, definitely get one. I wear the HR daily, and will wear it until one of us dies.