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There's always been a competitor that, IMHO, blows Reader out of the water, yet it doesn't have a behemoth behind it to support and push it to the masses. It's

by adyus 15y ago

There's always been a competitor that, IMHO, blows Reader out of the water, yet it doesn't have a behemoth behind it to support and push it to the masses. It's called Newsblur, and I'm getting closer to paying for the premium version each time I use it.

voidfiles 15y ago
NewsBlur is very cool, and it's a great UI. It hasn't always been around though. They are missing one thing though, the Human Curation part of Google Reader. There is no built in social core. That is a very big piece of what people will miss about Google Reader.
- conesus 15y ago
  Social features are planned. The mobile app is juuuuust about done, and then Search, and a few customizations (mark as unread, oldest to newest, etc). Then I'm going to attack social and get some really wonderful and innovative community features built. My biggest fear is that the community portion will be too popular and I'll have to find more time than the 1 hour a day I get to spend hacking on NewsBlur. I work on it only in my free time, you know.
  - voidfiles 15y ago
    Your work is very much appreciated, I really think NewsBlur is the only game in town when it comes to a competitor. Hopefully clients like reader will begin to notice your stuff as well, and we can develop an ecosystem around NewsBlur.
makmanalp 15y ago
Holy shit, I think the front page signinless-demo is using the css visited hack to figure out popular sites that I've visited, and showing them to me in the demo. Devious, but brilliant.
- cbr 15y ago
  I see the same front page in an incognito window. I think you just have similar favorite sites to the developers.
  - adyus 15y ago
    Heh, it seems that people who still use RSS or have an interest in it also share the same reading lists. Newsblur should just convert to a blog aggregator. Then it could change its name, say, to Hacker News? :)
- conesus 15y ago
  We just have the same taste. :-)
mkr-hn 15y ago
I made an account a while back, but don't remember any details. The forgot password link pops up a new email window. I have to try logging in to even get the forgot password link, and then it throws a window at me. It's trying to be clever. Clever can be fun and interesting, but password recovery is a well-solved problem. Sending an email to the dev to get a password reset (when I'm not even sure which email I used) is a lot of trouble when I have no problem with Reader. I don't think it's the lack of a behemoth that's hurting adoption. It's just doing a lot of weird stuff without explanation when existing feed readers work fine for most people.
- conesus 15y ago
  It's just where I spend my time. It's not a huge priority. Also, many users, about 50%, don't have an email address. I made this choice to simplify signup, but the fact is that some folks just cannot recover their password automatically. I'm planning to build a more automated method, but I have much more important features to build in the meantime.
conesus 15y ago
It's also open-source: http://github.com/samuelclay http://github.com/samuelclay. I'm very proud of the fact that I have taken in lots of input from the community and even some code.

by adyus 15y ago

voidfiles 15y ago

NewsBlur is very cool, and it's a great UI. It hasn't always been around though. They are missing one thing though, the Human Curation part of Google Reader. There is no built in social core. That is a very big piece of what people will miss about Google Reader.

conesus 15y ago
Social features are planned. The mobile app is juuuuust about done, and then Search, and a few customizations (mark as unread, oldest to newest, etc). Then I'm going to attack social and get some really wonderful and innovative community features built. My biggest fear is that the community portion will be too popular and I'll have to find more time than the 1 hour a day I get to spend hacking on NewsBlur. I work on it only in my free time, you know.
- voidfiles 15y ago
  Your work is very much appreciated, I really think NewsBlur is the only game in town when it comes to a competitor. Hopefully clients like reader will begin to notice your stuff as well, and we can develop an ecosystem around NewsBlur.

makmanalp 15y ago

Holy shit, I think the front page signinless-demo is using the css visited hack to figure out popular sites that I've visited, and showing them to me in the demo. Devious, but brilliant.

cbr 15y ago
I see the same front page in an incognito window. I think you just have similar favorite sites to the developers.
- adyus 15y ago
  Heh, it seems that people who still use RSS or have an interest in it also share the same reading lists. Newsblur should just convert to a blog aggregator. Then it could change its name, say, to Hacker News? :)
conesus 15y ago
We just have the same taste. :-)

mkr-hn 15y ago

I made an account a while back, but don't remember any details. The forgot password link pops up a new email window. I have to try logging in to even get the forgot password link, and then it throws a window at me. It's trying to be clever. Clever can be fun and interesting, but password recovery is a well-solved problem. Sending an email to the dev to get a password reset (when I'm not even sure which email I used) is a lot of trouble when I have no problem with Reader. I don't think it's the lack of a behemoth that's hurting adoption. It's just doing a lot of weird stuff without explanation when existing feed readers work fine for most people.

conesus 15y ago
It's just where I spend my time. It's not a huge priority. Also, many users, about 50%, don't have an email address. I made this choice to simplify signup, but the fact is that some folks just cannot recover their password automatically. I'm planning to build a more automated method, but I have much more important features to build in the meantime.

conesus 15y ago

It's also open-source: http://github.com/samuelclay http://github.com/samuelclay. I'm very proud of the fact that I have taken in lots of input from the community and even some code.