After trying quite a few of the alternatives, I realized how much I've become used to the reader UI, especially all the keyboard shortcuts. Yes, a lot of that is copied, but that just makes it worse when you're missing out on a few.
Then there's the update rate and the UI speed (e.g. feedly manages to freeze my whole browser). Also, while the interface missed out on a few of the Google improvements, at least it was possibly to turn off most administrative debris.
I might really have to pick up a self-hosted one and maybe make a few changes of my own, as RSS is a pretty big part of my daily 'net consumption (Never understood how people could cope with twitter for that. Feels like drowning in an echo chamber.)
I have only been reading my RSS via Reeder.app on iOS for the last couple of years. I've switched to Feedbin (I barely feel the $2 a month) and all works fine. Except for the fact that Reeder for iPad doesn't support Feedbin so I can only read on my iPhone and we're still waiting for the iPad version to be updated.
After trying to adapt to Feedly, I finally managed to find goread.io (http://goread.io). It's very close to the original, minus some shortcuts I had gotten used to.
After paying for Feed Wrangler and Feedbin, I find myself using SilverReader. The only Google Reader feature I miss is the onscreen menu to link to other Google services such as Translate and Finance.
I've been using Feedly with Reeder for iPhone. In terms of design I think Feedly is one of the better options, but they should really spend more time on making their UI a whole lot more responsive. I've always felt one of Google Reader's great tricks was its asynchronous UI which really gave it that speedy feeling.
Yes, the UI is really sluggish at times, but I can maybe attribute that to the pretty bad mobile-network coverage in my area. The old Reader UI was much preferable in this regard.
Also: The lack of an option to just open a link in the "real" browser drives me nuts. Is this some kind of lock-in attempt?
I've actually been a little grateful to them for closing down. When they did, I went all over trying out the alternatives. If they hadn't shut down I never would have noticed that there were better choices out there.
Now I'm on Newsblur (a lot of good things to say about other alternatives, but this is the one I settled on). With Google out of the way, there is now a chance for small success like them (and Feedly and Old Reader, etc) to get some market share and pull in some revenue.
It has not only turned out to be painless but beneficial. And it's given me a healthier outlook on relying on Google. That is, I don't.
No. Back to where I was before Reader.. Netvibes.. and in a way it's better too (it now has a reader view.) Don't know why there isn't more people namedropping it.
Been using Feedly (though tried a number of like products, but none were able to accommodate my large list of subscriptions or they were plagued with bugs, glitches and responsiveness issues). Even just plunked down $45 for a year "subscription" solely for Search but thus far, their implementation of "Search" leaves much to be desired -- it's not responsive ("incremental" searches can take 10 seconds or more, sometimes timing out) and search results don't go back any further than ~30 days.
Stopped using reader since Flipboard. But after the death of Reader, I find myself using Digg reader instead of Flipboard. I love that popularity dots.
So I guess I'm glad Google off'ed Reader, at least for me.
I'm glad it's gone since it forced me to look for better alternatives. I tried pretty much all of them, but settled on BazQux Reader. $10 a year for a vastly superior service is well worth it.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 69.3 ms ] threadThen there's the update rate and the UI speed (e.g. feedly manages to freeze my whole browser). Also, while the interface missed out on a few of the Google improvements, at least it was possibly to turn off most administrative debris.
I might really have to pick up a self-hosted one and maybe make a few changes of my own, as RSS is a pretty big part of my daily 'net consumption (Never understood how people could cope with twitter for that. Feels like drowning in an echo chamber.)
[1] http://theoldreader.com/
It's also open source on github(https://github.com/mjibson/goread).
Also: The lack of an option to just open a link in the "real" browser drives me nuts. Is this some kind of lock-in attempt?
Now I'm on Newsblur (a lot of good things to say about other alternatives, but this is the one I settled on). With Google out of the way, there is now a chance for small success like them (and Feedly and Old Reader, etc) to get some market share and pull in some revenue.
It has not only turned out to be painless but beneficial. And it's given me a healthier outlook on relying on Google. That is, I don't.
It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than Feedly.
Been using Feedly (though tried a number of like products, but none were able to accommodate my large list of subscriptions or they were plagued with bugs, glitches and responsiveness issues). Even just plunked down $45 for a year "subscription" solely for Search but thus far, their implementation of "Search" leaves much to be desired -- it's not responsive ("incremental" searches can take 10 seconds or more, sometimes timing out) and search results don't go back any further than ~30 days.
So I guess I'm glad Google off'ed Reader, at least for me.