6 ms·

The Old Reader

58 points by goplayoutside 4y ago

podgib 4y ago
Tempted to give this a try instead of feedly, but I can't find anywhere that they say (a) how much premium costs, or (b) what the restrictions on the free plan are. All I can see is on the Sign Up page, there's a drop-down that says what you get if you try premium for 14 days - no mention of how much it costs after that, or what the limitations are without it. I don't mind paying (I currently pay for feedly), but I'd like to know what I'm up for before signing up.
- 62951413 4y ago
  "the restrictions on the free plan": 100 feeds
sys_64738 4y ago
I found this via inoreader.
null_object 4y ago
I’ve been using the old reader for a few years now. The cost for my premium subscription is: “$25 per year - Up to 500 feeds” (quoted from my latest invoice). It works really well, the interface is simple and unadorned, with an emphasis on the targeted content rather than a flashy frontend. I don’t think I ever remember the service being down or unavailable all the time I’ve ever used it.
- hrbf 4y ago
  Thanks for the info. I’m suspicious of every service which is not upfront about pricing. I couldn’t find anything on the linked website regarding what to expect to eventually pay. Instead, a large “sign up” button. Which, from experience, usually means that a company is interested in gathering user data beyond providing the advertised service.
MollyRealized 4y ago
Honestly, I find that Inoreader is the one that's exploring new things in this field.
acemarke 4y ago
I'll put in a plug for BazQux Reader ( https://bazqux.com/ https://bazqux.com/ ). I switched to it shortly after Google Reader was killed, and I've used it daily since then. It's simple, the UI is clean, and it _just works_. Totally worth the subscription.
- hendersoon 4y ago
  I also enjoy BazQux. It's _extremely_ fast and I agree the web UI is pleasant to use. Built and maintained by one guy. Note the author is located in the Russia Federation but is relocating to London so it's safe to sign up. Servers are hosted in Germany.
pipeline_peak 4y ago
Old Reader has the best balance I’ve seen for something that’s free and maintains performance. I probably haven’t used RSS regularly enough, but I could easily live with 50 feeds to follow.
gumby 4y ago
The limitation with all these systems is the lack of filters (where I can group all messages that match a filter into a folder). It's common to support grouping feeds into folders, but I want to have a folder of covid-related articles, and one of australian climate policy etc. Feeds are often a jumble of messages on different topics (which is quite reasonable). Feedwrangler had a very primitive version of this but anyway it's end-of-lifed.* NetNewsWire used to have excellent filtering but it's been rewritten without them. I use ReadKit on the mac because it does have pretty good filtering. Its own rewrite doesn't have that feature yet, and sharing the filters between platforms will be a future feature. But at the moment, as far as I can tell, it's my only option. * The developer gave everyone a year's notice and arranged a transfer mechanism to another feed service. Pretty responsible!
- stevekemp 4y ago
  This is one of the reasons why I find it most convenient to use an RSS feed to email project instead of an online reader. Since the messages are "just email" you can filter, tag, and process them with .forward/.procmailrc, or your google filters. I put together a CLI of my own to do the fetching, but there are a whole bunch of them out there and to be honest you probably don't need much complexity - beyond a couple of simple filters, and include/exclude regular expressions.
  - paranoidrobot 4y ago
    This is why I liked Yahoo Pipes[1] - you could give it an RSS feed, and then transform it based on filters, combine it with other sources, etc. So you could take an RSS feed from a site, and filter it to just articles with a certain tag. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes
  - gofreddygo 4y ago
    That is neat. I've been moving my reading consumables to email for the past 2 years for indexing, categorizing and its been very stable. I'm going to try this out. Thanks!
imiric 4y ago
What's the best self-hosted version of this nowadays? I tried Miniflux and Tiny Tiny RSS a few years back, and wasn't impressed. Services like this look good, but I'd like to avoid depending on a 3rd-party to keep it running. Fool me once...
- tiimbz 4y ago
  There was a thread here a few days ago about Feedly [0], where several self-hosted options were discussed. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957118
- spikej 4y ago
  Not your question, but I tried a bunch after Google Reader shut down and landed on Bazqux. I've been a happy paying customer for years since the dev was so responsive and even helped identify an issue with one of my self-created feeds...
- gabmartini 4y ago
  There hasn't been a lot of players in this area lately, perhaps you should take a look to this Awesome RSS https://github.com/AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS https://github.com/AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS. Self hosting TTRSS and using the API to access it from third party software could be a solution if you don't like the official TTRSS web client.
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  I use FreshRSS on the server side, Reeder on mobile (iOS), Newsboat on desktop. Reeder + FreshRSS has been a very premium-feeling experience for me. One downside to this setup is that FreshRSS' web interface sucks on mobile, at least on iOS -- but with Reeder I never have to use the web interface. There is an Android RSS client I've used that works with FreshRSS but I can't recall it. I self host the following services to get RSS feeds for specific users/channels on closed (or less functional with RSS) platforms: - Bibliogram (Instagram) - Nitter (Twitter) - Teddit (Reddit) - RSSHub (Youtube and a bunch of other integrations)
  - 4y ago
gabmartini 4y ago
Oh good old Google reader with greasemonkey scripts to make the UI very minimal. Those were the good times buddy.
laktak 4y ago
Worth a mention: https://goodnews.click/ https://goodnews.click/
sdfjkl 4y ago
I've been using this ever since Google Reader went to the cemetery. Thinking about it now, I think it's absolute best feature is that it is stable. There's not this constant flow of bullshit "new feature! redesign! experience the new and enhanced look and totally fucked up interface of our new version!" that you get from most other bullshit companies. I love that. It's a great tool, because it's reliable. Only enhancement I can think of would be some ad-filtering, as a few of my feeds have metastasized "Sponsored" content that must be filtered out before polluting my brain.
- croutonwagon 4y ago
  I tried it out when moving off of feedly when they had a bug that effectively locked me out. I used a google address for my Account but don’t sign in via google. Feedly noticed my account was a google account and kept trying to redirect me to googles login. Support wasn’t helpful, and only responded when I posted a workaround on Reddit/twitter. Anyway at that point I started looking for alternatives. And ultimately landed on the older reader and miniflux. Frankly I am still on miniflux. https://miniflux.app/ https://miniflux.app/
noisy_boy 4y ago
The main issue I find with the RSS readers is that it doesn't cover commenting (maybe that is by design, I'm not sure). So if I have to login to a separate page/app for commenting, then might as well directly read over there. Though I don't have a lot of separate sources for my articles so maybe my concern isn't "mainstream".
- Semaphor 4y ago
  > might as well directly read over there. Yeah, if that’s just as easy, I don’t think they are for you. I have roughly 80 blogs and websites I get updates from, visiting them all the time to check for updates manually would be horrible.
- chupchap 4y ago
  Most websites would not allow comments to flow in via API. Most might not even have an API available for it
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  Some like Bazqux say they support comments. Not sure how reliable that is. I also care about comments a lot
gmoore 4y ago
Love The Old Reader- use it every day - it's how I get HN

58 points by goplayoutside 4y ago

Tempted to give this a try instead of feedly, but I can't find anywhere that they say (a) how much premium costs, or (b) what the restrictions on the free plan are. All I can see is on the Sign Up page, there's a drop-down that says what you get if you try premium for 14 days - no mention of how much it costs after that, or what the limitations are without it. I don't mind paying (I currently pay for feedly), but I'd like to know what I'm up for before signing up.

62951413 4y ago
"the restrictions on the free plan": 100 feeds

sys_64738 4y ago

I found this via inoreader.

null_object 4y ago

I’ve been using the old reader for a few years now. The cost for my premium subscription is: “$25 per year - Up to 500 feeds” (quoted from my latest invoice). It works really well, the interface is simple and unadorned, with an emphasis on the targeted content rather than a flashy frontend. I don’t think I ever remember the service being down or unavailable all the time I’ve ever used it.

hrbf 4y ago
Thanks for the info. I’m suspicious of every service which is not upfront about pricing. I couldn’t find anything on the linked website regarding what to expect to eventually pay. Instead, a large “sign up” button. Which, from experience, usually means that a company is interested in gathering user data beyond providing the advertised service.

MollyRealized 4y ago

Honestly, I find that Inoreader is the one that's exploring new things in this field.

acemarke 4y ago

I'll put in a plug for BazQux Reader ( https://bazqux.com/ https://bazqux.com/ ). I switched to it shortly after Google Reader was killed, and I've used it daily since then. It's simple, the UI is clean, and it _just works_. Totally worth the subscription.

hendersoon 4y ago
I also enjoy BazQux. It's _extremely_ fast and I agree the web UI is pleasant to use. Built and maintained by one guy. Note the author is located in the Russia Federation but is relocating to London so it's safe to sign up. Servers are hosted in Germany.

pipeline_peak 4y ago

Old Reader has the best balance I’ve seen for something that’s free and maintains performance. I probably haven’t used RSS regularly enough, but I could easily live with 50 feeds to follow.

gumby 4y ago

The limitation with all these systems is the lack of filters (where I can group all messages that match a filter into a folder). It's common to support grouping feeds into folders, but I want to have a folder of covid-related articles, and one of australian climate policy etc. Feeds are often a jumble of messages on different topics (which is quite reasonable). Feedwrangler had a very primitive version of this but anyway it's end-of-lifed.* NetNewsWire used to have excellent filtering but it's been rewritten without them. I use ReadKit on the mac because it does have pretty good filtering. Its own rewrite doesn't have that feature yet, and sharing the filters between platforms will be a future feature. But at the moment, as far as I can tell, it's my only option. * The developer gave everyone a year's notice and arranged a transfer mechanism to another feed service. Pretty responsible!

stevekemp 4y ago
This is one of the reasons why I find it most convenient to use an RSS feed to email project instead of an online reader. Since the messages are "just email" you can filter, tag, and process them with .forward/.procmailrc, or your google filters. I put together a CLI of my own to do the fetching, but there are a whole bunch of them out there and to be honest you probably don't need much complexity - beyond a couple of simple filters, and include/exclude regular expressions.
- paranoidrobot 4y ago
  This is why I liked Yahoo Pipes[1] - you could give it an RSS feed, and then transform it based on filters, combine it with other sources, etc. So you could take an RSS feed from a site, and filter it to just articles with a certain tag. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes
- gofreddygo 4y ago
  That is neat. I've been moving my reading consumables to email for the past 2 years for indexing, categorizing and its been very stable. I'm going to try this out. Thanks!

imiric 4y ago

What's the best self-hosted version of this nowadays? I tried Miniflux and Tiny Tiny RSS a few years back, and wasn't impressed. Services like this look good, but I'd like to avoid depending on a 3rd-party to keep it running. Fool me once...

tiimbz 4y ago
There was a thread here a few days ago about Feedly [0], where several self-hosted options were discussed. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957118
spikej 4y ago
Not your question, but I tried a bunch after Google Reader shut down and landed on Bazqux. I've been a happy paying customer for years since the dev was so responsive and even helped identify an issue with one of my self-created feeds...
gabmartini 4y ago
There hasn't been a lot of players in this area lately, perhaps you should take a look to this Awesome RSS https://github.com/AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS https://github.com/AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS. Self hosting TTRSS and using the API to access it from third party software could be a solution if you don't like the official TTRSS web client.
heywoodlh 4y ago
I use FreshRSS on the server side, Reeder on mobile (iOS), Newsboat on desktop. Reeder + FreshRSS has been a very premium-feeling experience for me. One downside to this setup is that FreshRSS' web interface sucks on mobile, at least on iOS -- but with Reeder I never have to use the web interface. There is an Android RSS client I've used that works with FreshRSS but I can't recall it. I self host the following services to get RSS feeds for specific users/channels on closed (or less functional with RSS) platforms: - Bibliogram (Instagram) - Nitter (Twitter) - Teddit (Reddit) - RSSHub (Youtube and a bunch of other integrations)
- 4y ago

gabmartini 4y ago

Oh good old Google reader with greasemonkey scripts to make the UI very minimal. Those were the good times buddy.

laktak 4y ago

Worth a mention: https://goodnews.click/ https://goodnews.click/

sdfjkl 4y ago

I've been using this ever since Google Reader went to the cemetery. Thinking about it now, I think it's absolute best feature is that it is stable. There's not this constant flow of bullshit "new feature! redesign! experience the new and enhanced look and totally fucked up interface of our new version!" that you get from most other bullshit companies. I love that. It's a great tool, because it's reliable. Only enhancement I can think of would be some ad-filtering, as a few of my feeds have metastasized "Sponsored" content that must be filtered out before polluting my brain.

croutonwagon 4y ago
I tried it out when moving off of feedly when they had a bug that effectively locked me out. I used a google address for my Account but don’t sign in via google. Feedly noticed my account was a google account and kept trying to redirect me to googles login. Support wasn’t helpful, and only responded when I posted a workaround on Reddit/twitter. Anyway at that point I started looking for alternatives. And ultimately landed on the older reader and miniflux. Frankly I am still on miniflux. https://miniflux.app/ https://miniflux.app/

noisy_boy 4y ago

The main issue I find with the RSS readers is that it doesn't cover commenting (maybe that is by design, I'm not sure). So if I have to login to a separate page/app for commenting, then might as well directly read over there. Though I don't have a lot of separate sources for my articles so maybe my concern isn't "mainstream".

Semaphor 4y ago
> might as well directly read over there. Yeah, if that’s just as easy, I don’t think they are for you. I have roughly 80 blogs and websites I get updates from, visiting them all the time to check for updates manually would be horrible.
chupchap 4y ago
Most websites would not allow comments to flow in via API. Most might not even have an API available for it
skinnymuch 4y ago
Some like Bazqux say they support comments. Not sure how reliable that is. I also care about comments a lot

gmoore 4y ago

Love The Old Reader- use it every day - it's how I get HN