9 ms·

This has been a long time coming. Four years ago I began work on my own feed reader, NewsBlur, and it's now a full-fledged Google Reader competitor. It's also a

by conesus 14y ago

This has been a long time coming. Four years ago I began work on my own feed reader, NewsBlur, and it's now a full-fledged Google Reader competitor. It's also a paid app and has been paying for itself nearly since the beginning. http://www.newsblur.com http://www.newsblur.com I hope HN finds NewsBlur useful, especially since it's got native mobile apps on iOS (iPhone+iPad), Android, Windows Phone, and Nokia MeeGo. Native story sharing was launched last Summer and I expect NewsBlur to be around for quite a while. It's also fully open-source, in case you decide to build your own private community: http://github.com/samuelclay http://github.com/samuelclay. I also have a full-scale re-design in the works, but if you can't get to the main site you can try using the beta site: http://dev.newsblur.com http://dev.newsblur.com

klausa 14y ago
Does NewsBlur have something that resembles Reader's full-screen view? If not, is that anywhere on your roadmap?
cadr 14y ago
Is there a way to import your google reader list into it?
- conesus 14y ago
  You bet! It's OAuth-based import, so when you create your account it's just a click away. Couldn't be easier. EDIT: And OPML is the other option when you signup. It's an easy import process, since it's really quite important to get that part right.
  - patrickdavey 14y ago
    So I didn't import the first time I created the account - how do I re-import?! :)
    - afita 14y ago
      Just click on the "+" button to add a new feed. In the dialog there is a button "Import from Google Reader or upload OPML". A small warning: the OPML import will delete you current sites and replace them with the ones from OPML, they will not be merged with the current ones you have.
  - donretag 14y ago
    No OPML?
    - 18pfsmt 14y ago
      There is OPML import ability on the same modal that offers GR import.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
  - pedrocr 14y ago
    Does that import everything or just the list? It would be nice to be able to import all the content as gotten from here: http://www.dataliberation.org/google/reader http://www.dataliberation.org/google/reader
- shritesh 14y ago
  It's taking like forever to import from reader.
mikeknoop 14y ago
It's a great day to be NewsBlur -- good luck with converting the new traffic!
- lispython 14y ago
  Their website is down now.
  - myth_drannon 14y ago
    use http://dev.newsblur.com/ http://dev.newsblur.com/
    - Semaphor 14y ago
      Saw it on their Twitter, didn't take long for it to die as well.
  - genwin 14y ago
    Until NewsBlur is back, check out niflet.com. It can handle 1 million visits hourly. It has 4000 feeds (so far) and adapts to your interests.
eridius 14y ago
I've been trying to remember what NewsBlur was called for the past 25 minutes. Thanks for posting this! That said, I lament the lack of a desktop app. I've been using Reeder for OS X, and I'd really like to have some sort of desktop app instead of relying on my iPhone or a website. Have you considered talking to existing app makers (e.g. Reeder) to see if they might want to switch over to using your service as their backend?
- HelloMcFly 14y ago
  I've been happy with FeedDemon Lite on the Windows desktop for ages. Sad to see I'm losing my sync with Google Reader, but at it'll still serve it's purpose.
- jseliger 14y ago
  What conesus is doing is very cool. But I'm still using NetNewsWire on OS X because it's a desktop RSS reader and it's good enough. Conesus: Have you considered running a Kickstarter for a desktop version of NewsBlur, in order to gauge interest? I'd definitely contribute.
  - eridius 14y ago
    NetNewsWire on OS X is nice, but I really need a) syncing between 3 different computers, and b) an iPhone client (and ideally an iPad client too, but not strictly required). Reeder + Google Reader has satisfied this until now.
zerovox 14y ago
Good news for you then! I used to use GR every day, then on a whim I switched the free newsblur version. To be perfectly honest, it doesn't offer me a lot more than GR did, but after hitting the 60 feed limit a couple of times I've now gone paid and I'm happy to support a service that does exactly what I want it to do. It would have been nice if it imported by saved(or linked or started or whatever they were called in the end) stories from GR though. One peeve though, I have no idea how to manage my feeds. Is there any easy way to move them round through drag-and-drop? It appears I have to move them manually one by one, but I have a lot of feeds and I'd rather not do that!
jakemcgraw 14y ago
spin up more servers brother!
recuter 14y ago
It is often asked of startup founders 'what if Google starts doing what you do?', a valid question. Perhaps it is worth contemplating products too small for Google to concern themselves with, ones they might abandon, that would still be an attractive opportunity for the rest of us. I've been rooting for you and recall enjoying the blog posts about its making - I've always figured that "RSS is dead" and there is no longer money in clients (people used to pay for desktop readers!).. Except that Google would kill Reader eventually and somebody will soak that userbase of nerds right up. And NewsBlur is clearly the top choice and will hopefully occupy similar mindshare as Reader did for us until now. Congrats, well played. :) I wonder what the next one along these lines will be as now would be a great time to start building it.
- niggler 14y ago
  " now would be a great time to start building it." Now is too late. The right time to have started building it was 2-6 months ago. Now is the time to market an existing solution. Citing the great gretzky quote, the "puck" is already here.
  - recuter 14y ago
    The way I see it you have until their next spring cleaning to figure out what they'll axe and make/market it. A couple of months is neither here nor there. I mean-- err, yes, totally too late! Don't worry about it.
    - ClintonWu 14y ago
      We've been working on something at Skim.Me (http://skim.me http://skim.me) for almost two years now as a replacement for Reader and/or iGoogle. We're still figuring it out but would love anyone looking for a replacement to signup for the next release.
  - yagibear 14y ago
    You missed the beginning of the sentence: "the next one" = "it", not Google reader
doomrobo 14y ago
Your website appears to be overloaded with traffic. You must be a happy man.
bdb 14y ago
I've been using NewsBlur for a few weeks now (I met Sam a couple weekends ago) and I think it's fantastic. Highly recommended.
kiba 14y ago
It's open source and you get paid anyway?
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  It's doubtful the average user wants to run their own server. I'm certainly capable of running my own, but it's more than worth the $24/yr not to.
joonix 14y ago
What is your Android widget like? The large Android widget ( i think it's 3x3?) is the only way I use Google Reader now, and I use it a lot. I hate that this is happening. Does your widget look like Reader's?
- getoffmalawn 14y ago
  Newsblur's Android app doesn't have a widget.
QuantumGuy 14y ago
Thanks for making this, it is way better than Google Reader!
18pfsmt 14y ago
Does NewsBlur support authenticated ATOM feeds? Also, does it support 'deep' Craigslist queries? I tried to add this feed, for example: http://denver.craigslist.org/search/cto?maxAsk=28000&minAsk=14000&query=535ix&srchType=T&format=rss http://denver.craigslist.org/search/cto?maxAsk=28000&min... without success, but it could be your server getting hammered.
sethish 14y ago
Thank you. I've tried newsblur, but I just hadn't had the impetus to switch until now. <RSS>"Rumors of my death are much exaggerated"</RSS>
brown9-2 14y ago
I started using NewsBlur about two months ago on a whim after using Google Reader for many years, and I really dig it. It was super simple to import my feeds from Google and I find that the navigation in NewsBlur lets me read/scroll through items (and ignore articles that aren't interesting) much faster than Google Reader. Anyone looking for a Google Reader substitute, definitely give NewsBlur a try!
joshschreuder 14y ago
Thanks for your work. I signed up in December, thinking I'd check it out, and ended up liking it so much that I made the switch from Reader the same day (premium too). I think that's a testament to how functional your app is. The iPhone app, while not up with Reeder (the iPhone app), is still very solid. I look forward to the redesign too. The beta site looks great!
mjfern 14y ago
We've also been working on a Google Reader replacement for the last two years: http://intigi.com http://intigi.com. With Intigi, you can import your RSS feeds from Reader (via OPML) and then filter the feeds by your preferred keywords and social signals (e.g., shares via Twitter). Intigi is a paid service, primarily targeted at marketers, but we do have a number of startups and founders using the product for content discovery and sharing. You can quickly share content you find to social media, a WordPress site, or to an RSS feed (e.g., to connect with IFTTT). I'm one of the cofounders and happy to answer any questions about the service and would love any feedback, if you decide to give it a test spin. Please email me at mjfern(at)intigi.com.
mmahemoff 14y ago
On the podcasting side, I began http://player.fm http://player.fm to manage podcasts in the cloud. Since then, Google has dropped support for its official Android app, Listen, and now Reader, which many people used for podcasts. It works from the browser, including mobile browsers, and native apps are coming. There's also an OPML importer, though currently experimental, and subscriptions can be consumed as OPML, RSS, etc.
- joelhaus 14y ago
  Wow, didn't consider this until your post. Losing Listen would be a big hit. Can anyone confirm that the Android Listen app will cease to function (i.e. refresh your existing feeds) once Google Reader is shut down? Am pretty sure that it relies solely on Google Reader's "Listen Subscriptions" tag for refreshing your podcast feeds, so that's definitely another gap that needs filling.
  - dodyg 14y ago
    I have been working on a river of news style RSS/ATOM/RiverJs client in the past few months (GPL3 license). The project site is here http://rivers.silverkeytech.com http://rivers.silverkeytech.com and you get the app here http://goo.gl/kShgp http://goo.gl/kShgp. The app is a bit young but it is maturing rapidly. I deploy a new version every two weeks or so. The next update is due in a few days.
  - runjake 14y ago
    Google Listen was killed off in August 2012: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/giving-you-better-google.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/giving-you-better-goo...
    - mmahemoff 14y ago
      It still continues to work and be used though, so GP's question is relevant. I think it can still work without it, but I'd be surprised if it's superior to all of the other free alternatives in the absence of Reader.
  - 14y ago
pseut 14y ago
I have to say, an rss reader that depends on numpy and scipy is pretty intriguing.
pclark 14y ago
when i read about greader shutting down I instantly thought "good day for Samuel"
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
fractalsea 14y ago
Out of curiosity: have you also seen a decline in users? I'm interested to know whether Google has seen a decline due to a general loss of interest in feed readers, or whether they are losing users to competitors, such as yours.
geoffw8 14y ago
Hey - thought you might be interested in knowing there are lots of people at a total loss over on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1a8ygk/official_google_reader_blog_powering_down_google/ http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1a8ygk/official_... Might be worth a post or two
stracjd 14y ago
And that site is down......
stracjd 14y ago
Get it... http://www.cloudflare.com/plans http://www.cloudflare.com/plans
- teraflop 14y ago
  I highly doubt that the performance bottleneck has anything to do with serving cacheable static files. When a user asks you which of their feeds have been updated in the last 60 seconds, that's not the kind of request you can just offload to a CDN.
  - schrodinger 14y ago
    Even their landing page is down right now. Would help with that!
    - eli 14y ago
      AFAIK, Cloudflare does not cache HTML files, full stop.
      - clarkdave 14y ago
        I believe it does - I use Cloudflare with my blog and every file, including *.html files, appears to be served by them.
        eli 14y ago
        The documentation and marketing on cloudflare.com is a bit misleading on this. Unless you do something unusual and potentially fragile with their page rules, it does not cache HTML: https://support.cloudflare.com/entries/22094188--Does-CloudFlare-cache-HTML-content- https://support.cloudflare.com/entries/22094188--Does-CloudF... It will hit your server for every page request. (In fact it only caches certain static files as determined by their file extension. It does not seem to pay much attention to Content-Type of Cache headers. Ugh.)
duncan_bayne 14y ago
I just tried signing up but I received an error message. Congrats on all the interest :)
philgoetz 14y ago
Better get some more servers. newsblur.com and dev.newsblur.com are not responding. "502 · NewsBlur is down"
shenedu 14y ago
NewsBlur is pretty good. I've used it for a while. I also write my own feed reader: Rssminer. It's not as full-fledged as NewsBlur, but is a much lighter alternative. It's support login with google and import google reader's subscription list. http://rssminer.net/demo http://rssminer.net/demo I hope HN finds it useful too. It's also fully open-source too: https://github.com/shenfeng https://github.com/shenfeng
- nebkor 14y ago
  It's fast and lightweight and uncluttered, which is great, but it lacks at least one bit of extremely critical functionality: I need, 100%, to see my content in forward-chronological order (most-recent-last). I've already given $24 for a year of NewsBlur, and I am super excited about being able to share and comment again. But, I know I'm not alone in wanting correct sorting.
- pihentagy 14y ago
  Nice one. Just 1-2 things I miss: - how can I mark an article read/unread? - could I delete an entire folder? - is there a limit on the number of feeds it can handle (I tried to import from reader, and I miss some feeds/folders)
fakeer 14y ago
Looks like it's not able to handle the load. Will check in some time. Nice app btw. The only good thing from GR closure might be that the dev community comes up with some real great alternatives. And yes, I hope paid ones.
- genwin 14y ago
  For an alternative check out niflet.com. It adapts to your interests. It's written in Go, such that it can handle a ton of traffic on a cheap box.
  - fakeer 14y ago
    Where shall I keep my feeds there? I mean my list of blogs that I want to follow. Their feed I mean. There is thousands of sources where I can explore, be social(though I hate the term) and read stories which learns from my choices (like Prismatic which certainly doesn't learn - just shows stories filtered using keywords). So, no dear this doesn't cut it.
    - genwin 14y ago
      Yes, it won't cut it for those who want control over the feeds.
brador 14y ago
http://skimfeed.com http://skimfeed.com - I don't like to share this out anymore because the server usually dies. But it's awesome.
- whouweling 14y ago
  If you like this layout you might also want to try out https://trackpanel.net https://trackpanel.net It lets you display RSS feeds (and bookmarks, tasks and notes) in a similar layout. (Also plugging a side project of mine :-))
  - brador 14y ago
    Usability tip: I would not have the Hi there box in the main panel. Maybe have it as a popup? Keep the main area clear. Else, the first thing people try to do is find a way to close/remove/delete it so they can get started, which leads to the down arrow on it, which doesn't work to delete it. And now they're stuck wondering how to delete it...then they close the window without even tasting something they may have enjoyed.
    - whouweling 14y ago
      The "Hi there ..." box is only displayed in the demo. After you register you start with a completely empty panel which you can then fill with your own blocks. Sorry for the confusion, I'll try to make it more clear :-)
fauigerzigerk 14y ago
Brilliant. I created an account. However, there are two very important features that Google reader has: (1) It lets you add subscriptions to regular websites without an RSS feed. (2) It lets you search for articles that were published before you subscribed to the feed. I think you could add (2) simply by redirecting to Google search using the site:sitename.com argument. (1) may not be that simple to add but it would be an incredibly important feature to have.
- mprovost 14y ago
  Google can do (1) because they crawl the entire web constantly. That's not going to be a trivial feature to add for anyone else. (2) is also probably a side effect of crawling pretty much everything before you ask for it.
  - haydenchambers 14y ago
    (1) try femtoo.com it registers changes on selected parts of selected sites
- rschmitty 14y ago
  I too am looking for a reader with rss search. This was the main reason I gave up whatever desktop app I was using at the time prior to Google Reader
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    Feedly does a decent job of picking up on which feed I mean when I put a site name in. I don't know how well that will work once they transition to their own API.
tspascoal 14y ago
i don't see windows phone listed on the web site. Is there a win8 version (win store, not desktop). tks
franciscoap 14y ago
Thank you for supporting Meego!
yarrel 14y ago
Happy NewsBlur customer here. I do recommend the service to anyone needing a Reader replacement.
xlevus 14y ago
When did you lower the number of enabled feeds to 12?
- Heliosmaster 14y ago
  When he realized that the traffic would be too much, and money would probably pour: https://twitter.com/NewsBlur/status/312025565815255040 https://twitter.com/NewsBlur/status/312025565815255040
  - xlevus 14y ago
    It's a move that makes sense sure. But it irks me that a service I've been using for however long just one day decides to cut my quota by 80%. It doesn't exactly spur me to start paying.
    - darrenkopp 14y ago
      He could just kill the product, like Google did with reader. Would that spur you to start paying?
    - nebkor 14y ago
      Maybe you should just realize that you should pay for the shit you use. Or if you don't value your own time, grab the source and run it yourself (and pay at least $1/month for hosting it, but probably really $10-$20/month for hosting it yourself).
deleted 14y ago
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moystard 14y ago
I am trying to register to NewsBlur but I encounter an error every single time after submitting the registration form. You should have a look at it as this is the perfect time to grab new users.
Flenser 14y ago
How many sites can a free account follow? The front page copy says 64, but when I log in it says I can only turn on 12.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  It was 64 before this news. The site regained some functionality when it went down to 12. I chose to go to Feedly instead, which was prepared for this news and works perfectly.
- Flenser 14y ago
  Found the commit, it was due to the load: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/commit/f5ec4fa37d0a8172173b3fb43d305bb4a03816f9 https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/commit/f5ec4fa37d0a81... Hopefully it will go back to 64 once things get under control.
Ziomislaw 14y ago
newsblur sucks totally, its interface is overloaded, it is slow. it only allows you a few feeds (unless you pay)
- dpcx 14y ago
  In what way is it slow? I've been using it for almost 2 years now, and have only seen slowness with particular feeds.
crag 14y ago
I'm sure this has been reported already but, after creating an account I see: "NewsBlur experienced an error The error has been logged and will be fixed soon so you won't have to see this message again."
- luckysh0t 14y ago
  ditto
itsjustjoe 14y ago
The 'Import from Google Reader' option, while a great idea, a) it needs to be advertised better, and b) it doesn't seem work for me.
mindcrime 14y ago
Very cool. I'll definitely check NewsBlur out. Hopefully it rocks so much that it makes me forget about Reader altogether.
nsxwolf 14y ago
Very cool, but where is the content in the demo coming from? The first thing I clicked on was some anti-Pope Francis screed. If it's a crowdsourced demo that's one thing, but probably not the friendliest thing to hand-pick.
tibbon 14y ago
Any (relatively easy) way to import all your feed from gReader?
tomjen3 14y ago
I just tried it out, but so far the only thing I can say is that it is potentially good, but way, way too slow.
Nelson69 14y ago
I don't use it every day, but I've paid for it since I first started using it a long time ago... Always want to support cool stuff when I can. Make sure there is an export feature, for some reason, I can't find it, and I'll be a daily user.
dtld 14y ago
newsblur cannot access now
duncan_bayne 14y ago
Well, I'm now a paid-up Newsblur subscriber ... couldn't find an easy way of giving feedback on the site so thought I'd use HN. The layout feels visually ... cluttered? ... but the functionality is excellent so I'm happy. Also the Google Reader import failed the first time, but succeeded the second.

by conesus 14y ago

klausa 14y ago

Does NewsBlur have something that resembles Reader's full-screen view? If not, is that anywhere on your roadmap?

cadr 14y ago

Is there a way to import your google reader list into it?

conesus 14y ago
You bet! It's OAuth-based import, so when you create your account it's just a click away. Couldn't be easier. EDIT: And OPML is the other option when you signup. It's an easy import process, since it's really quite important to get that part right.
- patrickdavey 14y ago
  So I didn't import the first time I created the account - how do I re-import?! :)
  - afita 14y ago
    Just click on the "+" button to add a new feed. In the dialog there is a button "Import from Google Reader or upload OPML". A small warning: the OPML import will delete you current sites and replace them with the ones from OPML, they will not be merged with the current ones you have.
- donretag 14y ago
  No OPML?
  - 18pfsmt 14y ago
    There is OPML import ability on the same modal that offers GR import.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- pedrocr 14y ago
  Does that import everything or just the list? It would be nice to be able to import all the content as gotten from here: http://www.dataliberation.org/google/reader http://www.dataliberation.org/google/reader
shritesh 14y ago
It's taking like forever to import from reader.

mikeknoop 14y ago

It's a great day to be NewsBlur -- good luck with converting the new traffic!

lispython 14y ago
Their website is down now.
- myth_drannon 14y ago
  use http://dev.newsblur.com/ http://dev.newsblur.com/
  - Semaphor 14y ago
    Saw it on their Twitter, didn't take long for it to die as well.
- genwin 14y ago
  Until NewsBlur is back, check out niflet.com. It can handle 1 million visits hourly. It has 4000 feeds (so far) and adapts to your interests.

eridius 14y ago

I've been trying to remember what NewsBlur was called for the past 25 minutes. Thanks for posting this! That said, I lament the lack of a desktop app. I've been using Reeder for OS X, and I'd really like to have some sort of desktop app instead of relying on my iPhone or a website. Have you considered talking to existing app makers (e.g. Reeder) to see if they might want to switch over to using your service as their backend?

HelloMcFly 14y ago
I've been happy with FeedDemon Lite on the Windows desktop for ages. Sad to see I'm losing my sync with Google Reader, but at it'll still serve it's purpose.
jseliger 14y ago
What conesus is doing is very cool. But I'm still using NetNewsWire on OS X because it's a desktop RSS reader and it's good enough. Conesus: Have you considered running a Kickstarter for a desktop version of NewsBlur, in order to gauge interest? I'd definitely contribute.
- eridius 14y ago
  NetNewsWire on OS X is nice, but I really need a) syncing between 3 different computers, and b) an iPhone client (and ideally an iPad client too, but not strictly required). Reeder + Google Reader has satisfied this until now.

zerovox 14y ago

Good news for you then! I used to use GR every day, then on a whim I switched the free newsblur version. To be perfectly honest, it doesn't offer me a lot more than GR did, but after hitting the 60 feed limit a couple of times I've now gone paid and I'm happy to support a service that does exactly what I want it to do. It would have been nice if it imported by saved(or linked or started or whatever they were called in the end) stories from GR though. One peeve though, I have no idea how to manage my feeds. Is there any easy way to move them round through drag-and-drop? It appears I have to move them manually one by one, but I have a lot of feeds and I'd rather not do that!

jakemcgraw 14y ago

spin up more servers brother!

recuter 14y ago

It is often asked of startup founders 'what if Google starts doing what you do?', a valid question. Perhaps it is worth contemplating products too small for Google to concern themselves with, ones they might abandon, that would still be an attractive opportunity for the rest of us. I've been rooting for you and recall enjoying the blog posts about its making - I've always figured that "RSS is dead" and there is no longer money in clients (people used to pay for desktop readers!).. Except that Google would kill Reader eventually and somebody will soak that userbase of nerds right up. And NewsBlur is clearly the top choice and will hopefully occupy similar mindshare as Reader did for us until now. Congrats, well played. :) I wonder what the next one along these lines will be as now would be a great time to start building it.

niggler 14y ago
" now would be a great time to start building it." Now is too late. The right time to have started building it was 2-6 months ago. Now is the time to market an existing solution. Citing the great gretzky quote, the "puck" is already here.
- recuter 14y ago
  The way I see it you have until their next spring cleaning to figure out what they'll axe and make/market it. A couple of months is neither here nor there. I mean-- err, yes, totally too late! Don't worry about it.
  - ClintonWu 14y ago
    We've been working on something at Skim.Me (http://skim.me http://skim.me) for almost two years now as a replacement for Reader and/or iGoogle. We're still figuring it out but would love anyone looking for a replacement to signup for the next release.
- yagibear 14y ago
  You missed the beginning of the sentence: "the next one" = "it", not Google reader

doomrobo 14y ago

Your website appears to be overloaded with traffic. You must be a happy man.

bdb 14y ago

I've been using NewsBlur for a few weeks now (I met Sam a couple weekends ago) and I think it's fantastic. Highly recommended.

kiba 14y ago

It's open source and you get paid anyway?

ConstantineXVI 14y ago
It's doubtful the average user wants to run their own server. I'm certainly capable of running my own, but it's more than worth the $24/yr not to.

joonix 14y ago

What is your Android widget like? The large Android widget ( i think it's 3x3?) is the only way I use Google Reader now, and I use it a lot. I hate that this is happening. Does your widget look like Reader's?

getoffmalawn 14y ago
Newsblur's Android app doesn't have a widget.

QuantumGuy 14y ago

Thanks for making this, it is way better than Google Reader!

18pfsmt 14y ago

Does NewsBlur support authenticated ATOM feeds? Also, does it support 'deep' Craigslist queries? I tried to add this feed, for example: http://denver.craigslist.org/search/cto?maxAsk=28000&minAsk=14000&query=535ix&srchType=T&format=rss http://denver.craigslist.org/search/cto?maxAsk=28000&min... without success, but it could be your server getting hammered.

sethish 14y ago

Thank you. I've tried newsblur, but I just hadn't had the impetus to switch until now. <RSS>"Rumors of my death are much exaggerated"</RSS>

brown9-2 14y ago

I started using NewsBlur about two months ago on a whim after using Google Reader for many years, and I really dig it. It was super simple to import my feeds from Google and I find that the navigation in NewsBlur lets me read/scroll through items (and ignore articles that aren't interesting) much faster than Google Reader. Anyone looking for a Google Reader substitute, definitely give NewsBlur a try!

joshschreuder 14y ago

Thanks for your work. I signed up in December, thinking I'd check it out, and ended up liking it so much that I made the switch from Reader the same day (premium too). I think that's a testament to how functional your app is. The iPhone app, while not up with Reeder (the iPhone app), is still very solid. I look forward to the redesign too. The beta site looks great!

mjfern 14y ago

We've also been working on a Google Reader replacement for the last two years: http://intigi.com http://intigi.com. With Intigi, you can import your RSS feeds from Reader (via OPML) and then filter the feeds by your preferred keywords and social signals (e.g., shares via Twitter). Intigi is a paid service, primarily targeted at marketers, but we do have a number of startups and founders using the product for content discovery and sharing. You can quickly share content you find to social media, a WordPress site, or to an RSS feed (e.g., to connect with IFTTT). I'm one of the cofounders and happy to answer any questions about the service and would love any feedback, if you decide to give it a test spin. Please email me at mjfern(at)intigi.com.

mmahemoff 14y ago

On the podcasting side, I began http://player.fm http://player.fm to manage podcasts in the cloud. Since then, Google has dropped support for its official Android app, Listen, and now Reader, which many people used for podcasts. It works from the browser, including mobile browsers, and native apps are coming. There's also an OPML importer, though currently experimental, and subscriptions can be consumed as OPML, RSS, etc.

joelhaus 14y ago
Wow, didn't consider this until your post. Losing Listen would be a big hit. Can anyone confirm that the Android Listen app will cease to function (i.e. refresh your existing feeds) once Google Reader is shut down? Am pretty sure that it relies solely on Google Reader's "Listen Subscriptions" tag for refreshing your podcast feeds, so that's definitely another gap that needs filling.
- dodyg 14y ago
  I have been working on a river of news style RSS/ATOM/RiverJs client in the past few months (GPL3 license). The project site is here http://rivers.silverkeytech.com http://rivers.silverkeytech.com and you get the app here http://goo.gl/kShgp http://goo.gl/kShgp. The app is a bit young but it is maturing rapidly. I deploy a new version every two weeks or so. The next update is due in a few days.
- runjake 14y ago
  Google Listen was killed off in August 2012: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/giving-you-better-google.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/giving-you-better-goo...
  - mmahemoff 14y ago
    It still continues to work and be used though, so GP's question is relevant. I think it can still work without it, but I'd be surprised if it's superior to all of the other free alternatives in the absence of Reader.
- 14y ago

pseut 14y ago

I have to say, an rss reader that depends on numpy and scipy is pretty intriguing.

pclark 14y ago

when i read about greader shutting down I instantly thought "good day for Samuel"

deleted 14y ago

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fractalsea 14y ago

Out of curiosity: have you also seen a decline in users? I'm interested to know whether Google has seen a decline due to a general loss of interest in feed readers, or whether they are losing users to competitors, such as yours.

geoffw8 14y ago

Hey - thought you might be interested in knowing there are lots of people at a total loss over on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1a8ygk/official_google_reader_blog_powering_down_google/ http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1a8ygk/official_... Might be worth a post or two

stracjd 14y ago

And that site is down......

stracjd 14y ago

Get it... http://www.cloudflare.com/plans http://www.cloudflare.com/plans

teraflop 14y ago
I highly doubt that the performance bottleneck has anything to do with serving cacheable static files. When a user asks you which of their feeds have been updated in the last 60 seconds, that's not the kind of request you can just offload to a CDN.
- schrodinger 14y ago
  Even their landing page is down right now. Would help with that!
  - eli 14y ago
    AFAIK, Cloudflare does not cache HTML files, full stop.
    - clarkdave 14y ago
      I believe it does - I use Cloudflare with my blog and every file, including *.html files, appears to be served by them.
      - eli 14y ago
        The documentation and marketing on cloudflare.com is a bit misleading on this. Unless you do something unusual and potentially fragile with their page rules, it does not cache HTML: https://support.cloudflare.com/entries/22094188--Does-CloudFlare-cache-HTML-content- https://support.cloudflare.com/entries/22094188--Does-CloudF... It will hit your server for every page request. (In fact it only caches certain static files as determined by their file extension. It does not seem to pay much attention to Content-Type of Cache headers. Ugh.)

duncan_bayne 14y ago

I just tried signing up but I received an error message. Congrats on all the interest :)

philgoetz 14y ago

Better get some more servers. newsblur.com and dev.newsblur.com are not responding. "502 · NewsBlur is down"

shenedu 14y ago

NewsBlur is pretty good. I've used it for a while. I also write my own feed reader: Rssminer. It's not as full-fledged as NewsBlur, but is a much lighter alternative. It's support login with google and import google reader's subscription list. http://rssminer.net/demo http://rssminer.net/demo I hope HN finds it useful too. It's also fully open-source too: https://github.com/shenfeng https://github.com/shenfeng

nebkor 14y ago
It's fast and lightweight and uncluttered, which is great, but it lacks at least one bit of extremely critical functionality: I need, 100%, to see my content in forward-chronological order (most-recent-last). I've already given $24 for a year of NewsBlur, and I am super excited about being able to share and comment again. But, I know I'm not alone in wanting correct sorting.
pihentagy 14y ago
Nice one. Just 1-2 things I miss: - how can I mark an article read/unread? - could I delete an entire folder? - is there a limit on the number of feeds it can handle (I tried to import from reader, and I miss some feeds/folders)

fakeer 14y ago

Looks like it's not able to handle the load. Will check in some time. Nice app btw. The only good thing from GR closure might be that the dev community comes up with some real great alternatives. And yes, I hope paid ones.

genwin 14y ago
For an alternative check out niflet.com. It adapts to your interests. It's written in Go, such that it can handle a ton of traffic on a cheap box.
- fakeer 14y ago
  Where shall I keep my feeds there? I mean my list of blogs that I want to follow. Their feed I mean. There is thousands of sources where I can explore, be social(though I hate the term) and read stories which learns from my choices (like Prismatic which certainly doesn't learn - just shows stories filtered using keywords). So, no dear this doesn't cut it.
  - genwin 14y ago
    Yes, it won't cut it for those who want control over the feeds.

brador 14y ago

http://skimfeed.com http://skimfeed.com - I don't like to share this out anymore because the server usually dies. But it's awesome.

whouweling 14y ago
If you like this layout you might also want to try out https://trackpanel.net https://trackpanel.net It lets you display RSS feeds (and bookmarks, tasks and notes) in a similar layout. (Also plugging a side project of mine :-))
- brador 14y ago
  Usability tip: I would not have the Hi there box in the main panel. Maybe have it as a popup? Keep the main area clear. Else, the first thing people try to do is find a way to close/remove/delete it so they can get started, which leads to the down arrow on it, which doesn't work to delete it. And now they're stuck wondering how to delete it...then they close the window without even tasting something they may have enjoyed.
  - whouweling 14y ago
    The "Hi there ..." box is only displayed in the demo. After you register you start with a completely empty panel which you can then fill with your own blocks. Sorry for the confusion, I'll try to make it more clear :-)

fauigerzigerk 14y ago

Brilliant. I created an account. However, there are two very important features that Google reader has: (1) It lets you add subscriptions to regular websites without an RSS feed. (2) It lets you search for articles that were published before you subscribed to the feed. I think you could add (2) simply by redirecting to Google search using the site:sitename.com argument. (1) may not be that simple to add but it would be an incredibly important feature to have.

mprovost 14y ago
Google can do (1) because they crawl the entire web constantly. That's not going to be a trivial feature to add for anyone else. (2) is also probably a side effect of crawling pretty much everything before you ask for it.
- haydenchambers 14y ago
  (1) try femtoo.com it registers changes on selected parts of selected sites
rschmitty 14y ago
I too am looking for a reader with rss search. This was the main reason I gave up whatever desktop app I was using at the time prior to Google Reader
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Feedly does a decent job of picking up on which feed I mean when I put a site name in. I don't know how well that will work once they transition to their own API.

tspascoal 14y ago

i don't see windows phone listed on the web site. Is there a win8 version (win store, not desktop). tks

franciscoap 14y ago

Thank you for supporting Meego!

yarrel 14y ago

Happy NewsBlur customer here. I do recommend the service to anyone needing a Reader replacement.

xlevus 14y ago

When did you lower the number of enabled feeds to 12?

Heliosmaster 14y ago
When he realized that the traffic would be too much, and money would probably pour: https://twitter.com/NewsBlur/status/312025565815255040 https://twitter.com/NewsBlur/status/312025565815255040
- xlevus 14y ago
  It's a move that makes sense sure. But it irks me that a service I've been using for however long just one day decides to cut my quota by 80%. It doesn't exactly spur me to start paying.
  - darrenkopp 14y ago
    He could just kill the product, like Google did with reader. Would that spur you to start paying?
  - nebkor 14y ago
    Maybe you should just realize that you should pay for the shit you use. Or if you don't value your own time, grab the source and run it yourself (and pay at least $1/month for hosting it, but probably really $10-$20/month for hosting it yourself).

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moystard 14y ago

I am trying to register to NewsBlur but I encounter an error every single time after submitting the registration form. You should have a look at it as this is the perfect time to grab new users.

Flenser 14y ago

How many sites can a free account follow? The front page copy says 64, but when I log in it says I can only turn on 12.

mkr-hn 14y ago
It was 64 before this news. The site regained some functionality when it went down to 12. I chose to go to Feedly instead, which was prepared for this news and works perfectly.
Flenser 14y ago
Found the commit, it was due to the load: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/commit/f5ec4fa37d0a8172173b3fb43d305bb4a03816f9 https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/commit/f5ec4fa37d0a81... Hopefully it will go back to 64 once things get under control.

Ziomislaw 14y ago

newsblur sucks totally, its interface is overloaded, it is slow. it only allows you a few feeds (unless you pay)

dpcx 14y ago
In what way is it slow? I've been using it for almost 2 years now, and have only seen slowness with particular feeds.

crag 14y ago

I'm sure this has been reported already but, after creating an account I see: "NewsBlur experienced an error The error has been logged and will be fixed soon so you won't have to see this message again."

luckysh0t 14y ago
ditto

itsjustjoe 14y ago

The 'Import from Google Reader' option, while a great idea, a) it needs to be advertised better, and b) it doesn't seem work for me.

mindcrime 14y ago

Very cool. I'll definitely check NewsBlur out. Hopefully it rocks so much that it makes me forget about Reader altogether.

nsxwolf 14y ago

Very cool, but where is the content in the demo coming from? The first thing I clicked on was some anti-Pope Francis screed. If it's a crowdsourced demo that's one thing, but probably not the friendliest thing to hand-pick.

tibbon 14y ago

Any (relatively easy) way to import all your feed from gReader?

tomjen3 14y ago

I just tried it out, but so far the only thing I can say is that it is potentially good, but way, way too slow.

Nelson69 14y ago

I don't use it every day, but I've paid for it since I first started using it a long time ago... Always want to support cool stuff when I can. Make sure there is an export feature, for some reason, I can't find it, and I'll be a daily user.

dtld 14y ago

newsblur cannot access now

duncan_bayne 14y ago

Well, I'm now a paid-up Newsblur subscriber ... couldn't find an easy way of giving feedback on the site so thought I'd use HN. The layout feels visually ... cluttered? ... but the functionality is excellent so I'm happy. Also the Google Reader import failed the first time, but succeeded the second.