Tuesday, June 25, 2013

RSS Reader

Google Reader goes away on Monday, and so I've moved to The Old Reader.  It's been working fine for the last 10 days or so.  It pulls your existing subscriptions in, so the transition will take all of a minute or two.

Admittedly, I don't do all that much funky with Google Reader, so if you have lots of fancy razzmataz there, this might not work for you.  But it seems like a good replacement if you just want an RSS reader.

Oh, and it works in a browser, so it's cross platform.  Works great on both Windows and Linux.  Haven't tried it on a smart phone, but expect it would work.

9 comments:

  1. Pardon my ignorance but what is RSS and what is an RSS reader and what does it let you accomplish.

    Thanks,
    GB

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  2. Glenn: RSS stands for "really simple syndication." It lets web site owners (bloggers, etc.) publish their posts directly to subscribers. A subscriber then uses an RSS reader to read the published posts. The reader can receive and display posts from many sources, so the subscriber doesn't have to browse to a bunch of different web sites to get them.

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  3. I'm not a big RSS user but I use RSS Ticker for Firefox. I love the ticker format and I always have my browser open.

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  4. Thanks Dave, that was a good reminder as now that you explained it I remember having signed up for it a while back but I never use it.

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  5. Thanks, I'll look at it when I get back.

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  6. I switched to Feedly a few weeks ago. Then, over the weekend, it got very glitchy--to the point that it was unusable. I migrated to Old Reader on Monday and have been pleased. It's still in beta and has some problems.

    I'm going to keep both accounts, probably using Feedly as a backup.

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  7. For me, the killer feature of Google reader was cloud based "read" status and an API that platform specific apps could use to get to it.

    Browser based isn't good enough when I use my phone everywhere, a tablet on the couch, and, sure, a browser at the desktop. Every browser-only reader I've tried breaks down horribly on tight view ports and/or screws up touchscreen UIs.

    Feedbin, combined with its Android app, has been working well above its $2/month cost so far.

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  8. Using Feedly and have no problems...
    So far...
    Damn bet I screwed that up!

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  9. Feedly's been OK for me, but I think I'm going to like the interface of The Old Reader better - more like Google Reader. Thanks for the heads-up!

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