4 ms·

Tragically, no. After Google killed Reader, I (amazingly) couldn't find another client that didn't have some fatal flaw that didn't make it not worth the bother

by dilap 7y ago

Tragically, no. After Google killed Reader, I (amazingly) couldn't find another client that didn't have some fatal flaw that didn't make it not worth the bother. I now use the dumb, low-tech solution of having a few folders of bookmarks of sites in various categories, which I'll occasionally check using "Open in Tabs". Lamentable

aurora72 7y ago
Who is Google? (if you see what I mean)
mipmap04 7y ago
At one point, I was building a service that allowed you to build digests of collections of feeds and presented the articles in a reddit-style view. Additionally, if others had the articles in their digests, it added a comment section. Is this something you would use? I had trouble gaining traction with the service and shuttered it, but I think about starting it again often.
- dilap 7y ago
  It's an interesting idea, but probably personally I wouldn't use it. Honestly, I think momentum has shifted, mostly to twitter, w/ people either posting content directly there or linking to medium, and occasionally, personal blogs. But Twitter is flawed (if for no other reason, than because they are increasingly exercising editorial control). I look forward to whatever replaces it...
fxj 7y ago
I use inoreader.com and don't miss google reader. There is a free version with 150 subscriptions and you can search your feeds. Also there are apps for android and ios.
ink_13 7y ago
Try The Old Reader: https://www.theoldreader.com/ https://www.theoldreader.com/ It's 95% of what Google Reader used to be, your missing 5% may vary. (For me, my missing 5% is a decent mobile client, but I miss that a lot less than I expected)
- underyx 7y ago
  I just realized after so many years that the reason I always failed to keep using any other RSS reader is that I miss the per-article popularity scores from Google Reader. I used to flood myself with headlines there and read the ones with interesting titles or high popularity (I don't even remember what that was based on; number of stars by other Reader users?) Then I'd just mark all as read. Reddit and HN have replaced this for me somewhat, the only issue is that I don't get to curate the source blogs anymore.
marios 7y ago
After Google killed Reader, I switched to theoldreader.com and then inoreader. Very clean interface, the Android app rocks. I'm still too cheap to go on a paid plan, but even so the only limitation I see is the number of total feeds. Then again, I'm not sure that's a bad thing considering I have way too many feeds as it so having the possibility to add any more would only worsen the problem.
derefr 7y ago
https://feedly.com/ https://feedly.com/ works perfectly as a Google Reader replacement backend (i.e. an “RSS subscription and read-state-tracking” service.) I don’t like Feedly’s own web-app frontend, but you don’t need to use it; there are many nice, fancy RSS-reader clients implemented as native apps on various OSes, that can use Feedly as their backing service, sort of like a native mail client using IMAP. Personally, I use Reeder on macOS and iOS, but there are at least a dozen such clients that connect to Feedly. I should also mention, if it’s the backend features that you have a problem with, that there’s at least one piece of RSS server software, https://feedafever.com/ https://feedafever.com/, that all these clients also natively support (or at least supported; the product is dead now, so some clients are sadly removing support.) I mention it because it was a host-it-yourself solution, and therefore, even though it was a closed-source product, it had a clearly-defined client-server protocol and clients supporting Fever servers also necessarily have/had a “server API endpoint URL” field in their Fever service configuration. This means that it’s possible to implement a Fever-protocol server yourself, and any client still supporting the Fever “service” will then sync their subscriptions and read-states against your backend. So you can actually have whatever backend features you can think of, if you really care to. (Tangent: why has nobody written an RFC for a standard RSS client-to-service sync protocol? Fever’s protocol is pretty crap, honestly; it used very nonstandard names, aggregated events into messages at the wrong levels, etc. There’s no reason that all these RSS sync-backend services need their own custom APIs; they all have exactly the same data model. Though, I guess, when you start to think about it, you realize that there’s no reason that these backends shouldn’t be speaking IMAP to their clients...)
kgwxd 7y ago
Occasionally checking back on things and reskimming is such a huge waste of time. It's well worth grabbing a good old desktop RSS reader just to fix that one problem.
JohnFen 7y ago
I've had a very good experience with gReader on Android devices.

by dilap 7y ago

aurora72 7y ago

Who is Google? (if you see what I mean)

mipmap04 7y ago

At one point, I was building a service that allowed you to build digests of collections of feeds and presented the articles in a reddit-style view. Additionally, if others had the articles in their digests, it added a comment section. Is this something you would use? I had trouble gaining traction with the service and shuttered it, but I think about starting it again often.

dilap 7y ago
It's an interesting idea, but probably personally I wouldn't use it. Honestly, I think momentum has shifted, mostly to twitter, w/ people either posting content directly there or linking to medium, and occasionally, personal blogs. But Twitter is flawed (if for no other reason, than because they are increasingly exercising editorial control). I look forward to whatever replaces it...

fxj 7y ago

I use inoreader.com and don't miss google reader. There is a free version with 150 subscriptions and you can search your feeds. Also there are apps for android and ios.

ink_13 7y ago

Try The Old Reader: https://www.theoldreader.com/ https://www.theoldreader.com/ It's 95% of what Google Reader used to be, your missing 5% may vary. (For me, my missing 5% is a decent mobile client, but I miss that a lot less than I expected)

underyx 7y ago
I just realized after so many years that the reason I always failed to keep using any other RSS reader is that I miss the per-article popularity scores from Google Reader. I used to flood myself with headlines there and read the ones with interesting titles or high popularity (I don't even remember what that was based on; number of stars by other Reader users?) Then I'd just mark all as read. Reddit and HN have replaced this for me somewhat, the only issue is that I don't get to curate the source blogs anymore.

marios 7y ago

After Google killed Reader, I switched to theoldreader.com and then inoreader. Very clean interface, the Android app rocks. I'm still too cheap to go on a paid plan, but even so the only limitation I see is the number of total feeds. Then again, I'm not sure that's a bad thing considering I have way too many feeds as it so having the possibility to add any more would only worsen the problem.

derefr 7y ago

https://feedly.com/ https://feedly.com/ works perfectly as a Google Reader replacement backend (i.e. an “RSS subscription and read-state-tracking” service.) I don’t like Feedly’s own web-app frontend, but you don’t need to use it; there are many nice, fancy RSS-reader clients implemented as native apps on various OSes, that can use Feedly as their backing service, sort of like a native mail client using IMAP. Personally, I use Reeder on macOS and iOS, but there are at least a dozen such clients that connect to Feedly. I should also mention, if it’s the backend features that you have a problem with, that there’s at least one piece of RSS server software, https://feedafever.com/ https://feedafever.com/, that all these clients also natively support (or at least supported; the product is dead now, so some clients are sadly removing support.) I mention it because it was a host-it-yourself solution, and therefore, even though it was a closed-source product, it had a clearly-defined client-server protocol and clients supporting Fever servers also necessarily have/had a “server API endpoint URL” field in their Fever service configuration. This means that it’s possible to implement a Fever-protocol server yourself, and any client still supporting the Fever “service” will then sync their subscriptions and read-states against your backend. So you can actually have whatever backend features you can think of, if you really care to. (Tangent: why has nobody written an RFC for a standard RSS client-to-service sync protocol? Fever’s protocol is pretty crap, honestly; it used very nonstandard names, aggregated events into messages at the wrong levels, etc. There’s no reason that all these RSS sync-backend services need their own custom APIs; they all have exactly the same data model. Though, I guess, when you start to think about it, you realize that there’s no reason that these backends shouldn’t be speaking IMAP to their clients...)

kgwxd 7y ago

Occasionally checking back on things and reskimming is such a huge waste of time. It's well worth grabbing a good old desktop RSS reader just to fix that one problem.

JohnFen 7y ago

I've had a very good experience with gReader on Android devices.