I use Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter as my aggregators; the handful of blogs I religiously follow (Brain Pickings, BoingBoing, Complex) are all pinned in Chrome, while blogs and webcomics I like to check sporadically are bookmarked. I use Pocket to privately aggregate, tag, and save stuff that I find interesting.
Personally, I learn and read a LOT more like this than I ever did using Reader; furthermore, I am keenly interested in everything I end up Pocketing, and my various social networks and Reddit subs are more tightly filtered and tuned to my interests than an RSS feed. Even now, my Reader extension is showing 1000+ unread articles, but most of them are things I don't really care about.
I don't care that Reader is going bye-bye. It's not that useful, for me.
Much nicer way to read all news quickly without having to go to a bunch of websites. Are there readers that can scrape the proper content of sites that only put the title in the RSS feed?
Much nicer way to read all news quickly without having to go to a bunch of websites. Are there readers that can scrape the proper content of sites that only put the title in the RSS feed?
I use Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter as my aggregators; the handful of blogs I religiously follow (Brain Pickings, BoingBoing, Complex) are all pinned in Chrome, while blogs and webcomics I like to check sporadically are bookmarked. I use Pocket to privately aggregate, tag, and save stuff that I find interesting.
Problem with things like Twitter and such is that content drowns in flood of stuff too fast. With rss I can be away from internet and computer for days and weeks and be able to come back and see everything I've missed. Sure I'll probably click the "mark everything older than a day read" -button, but still the possibility is there.
As a heavy user of Google Reader I'm not worried. The reason why there aren't any really great RSS synching / aggregation apps is that techies who would use them have been skating by using Reader the past 10 years. I imagine we'll see a bunch of refinements to 3rd party, paid aggregators (and self-hosted open source projects) in the next three months, and everything will be cool.
I personally don't visit many websites. I'll go on the 2-3 forums I frequent, look at facebook/twitter/app.net messages I get, watch youtube channels I'm subscribed to, and peruse Reddit every once in a while. Those things combined are less than a quarter of what I'll read in a day, and the rest is either blogs, webcomics, toomblrs, or other feeds that all get piped into my reader. I skim a lot, and get news and such pretty quickly, and I can send long articles to Instapaper if I want to go in-depth.
Like I said before, it's not something to get up in arms about. It would be nice to see some innovation in this space, and Google just gave a bunch of indie devs the kick in the ass they needed.
EDIT: As for the "it's dying!" argument? Bitch I'm lurking on four IRC channels right now.
Also - don't bother switching till right before Google Reader closes. Everybody is rushing every other available service, give them a few months time for competition, to let the cream float to the top, see how everything turns out. THEN pick the best one, not right now, while everyone is going mental trying to upgrade and draw all the Reader users.
Still, I'm disappointed nothing so far seems to be able to understand that I have all my YouTubes in the YouTube folder, /and/ in the proper category. I mean, it's a super basic feature. Maybe Google reader doesn't export tags correctly? Miro seems to do podcasts well, so I guess I'll be moving to that for music. I do still regret giving up on adding feeds as easily as with Reader. Especially for YouTube.
One that sticks out to me is how well it keeps track of what I've missed since the last time I was online. I regularly go a week without reading any news or blogs, and when I get home, having 200 unread posts in Reader is super handy. I can flick through them all in about 20 minutes, clicking on headlines, reading posts, catching up with web comics, etc. If there is a big post I'll click keep unread or open it in a new tab to read later, and often stick it in Instapaper to read on my iPhone.
I'll certainly be looking for a Reader replacement in the future, and I'll be willing to pay for one to make sure it sticks around for a while. As long as they have a mobile version, I'll be fine.
Feedly is nice, will automatically transition you from Reader, and will probably serve as the backend for other apps in the future. There's no reason not to try it.
What follows is a spoiler for something and an extremely lame "pun." You have been warned.
Entropy exists. Everything is always dying.
Except Entropy.
Once Entropy reaches max level it stops leveling up.
Only because Kyubey and the other Incubators are harvesting the souls of Magical Girls.
(Sorry, had to do it). ----------------------
I figure that, if there is a true need for it, someone will essentially fill in Google Reader's gap and will probably do a better job. More than likely, the reason there isn't another perfect Google Reader is because Google already had one. *shrug*
I figure that, if there is a true need for it, someone will essentially fill in Google Reader's gap and will probably do a better job.
Yeah, but the interesting thing to take away from that is that there is a potential market for good/better RSS solutions and Google has been for years squatting on it by producing a subsidized and semi-crappy product for free.
Feedly has also said that over third party app developers can get onto their Normandy API, I am going to e-mail the 3rd Party app I use to see if they can get onto it. I am not really sure that is a good name for it since all I really think of is people horribly being killed trying to enter France in World War II. But I guess that is all the apps/people who don't know about it going down dieing.
Also our podcast sucks. Especially since I won't be recording next week due to PAX, and stupid Jason has Fast Karate filling in for me. However, it just goes to show that it takes two awesome people to take my place.
Sweet, time to listen to an episode of ATW9K again.
Also, I wish I could remember all the days every single webcomic I read updates, because that's totally 100% consistent. RSS does not need to have the whole comic, or the whole article, or the whole podcast, just a link to the content. The primary goal of RSS is notification.
Apparently the Chrome browser has completely dropped RSS support as well...
So Google is not only distancing itself from providing an RSS service it is also refusing to implement a client. This seems to be less about dropping an unprofitable service and more about trying to kill of a standard that is by construction impervious to third party forced ad revenues / injected content.
Because Apple gets their money from selling you open source software?
Because I am Apple's customer. Also, that is a what they get their money from issue not a where.
I don't like being sold to Google's customers and I have been fortunate enough to never have worked for one of Microsoft's customers.
People get hung up on the Evil/Good, Open/Closed arguments which are in my mind pretty misleading. A much better explanation and, indeed, predictor of a company's behaviour can be had by looking at where the money comes from. Apple has an iron grip on the App store and gives Flash the finger because that makes for a better user experience. Google kills of RSS and Wave because federated services can not be monetized by third party advertising. Microsoft has a hard time modernizing Windows because enterpise clients need their crappy ass window 3.1 era software to work and can't get the company focused behind a tablet effort because the OEM's will throw a fit. Nokia couldn't get a decent smartphone made because all of their phones were made to the order of telcos for market segments specified by the telcos. Facebook and Twitter fight tooth and nail against third party clients or integration efforts that could take data or user interaction out of their service because you and your actions / netowork is the only thing they can sell.
So yes, I will give Apple my money, because what they sell me they made for me and because of that they make sure their products are nice and delightful and effortless to use, and if they start making crappy stuff I'll stop giving them my money.
Finally, and I know you probably know this (and I know you may be trolling anyway), Apple does not sell me open source software. In the instances where Apple software is based on open source code they have put a shit ton of work into it to make the utter shitsack that is OSS user intarface / usabilty / compatibility / bugginess into something that actually works. Meanwhile Mark "I've been to Space" Shuttleworth can't seem to get his act together and do the same with "Linux on the desktop(tm - every year since 2001)" without getting caught selling out his "customers".
I love Linux and Unix for my work, I loved Windows while it was the only way to play games, I love Apple for getting usabilty right. I also hate Linux for being a bunch of neckbeards who only care about their own little sandboxes and don't give a damn about the paltform, I hate Windows... well I don't actually -- I just don't care at all, and I hate Apple not being robust (ass old filesystem, iCloud useless, TimeMachine flakey), not being suited for development (other than X-Code), and being very, very quirky (subtitle support for the AppleTV is crap, AirPlay for headless mac mini doesn't work).
I agree on most of your points, though I do not agree with most of your useability points. Have you tried Linux in the last 10 years? Sure, it won't work perfectly out of the box with everything, but unlike OSX, if something doesn't work, you can actually do something about that. On OSX, it either works, or it doesn't. On most Linuxes, you can work on it, and make it do exactly what you want. On top of that, Linux now 'just works'. And I find it eminently useable. Gnome3 is a delight to use.
You also touched on some privacy concerns with Linux. I would like to point out that it was a big deal because of the expectations that Linux brings. Because of it's open-source nature. If Apple had done the same thing, sending results directly to Amazon, nobody would've said anything.
I just wanted to say these things. I don't disagree with you on most points.
Actually, could I just say something about Linux for a moment? My desktop's graphics card is half dead. It literally will not run with the drivers loaded under either windows or linux. But Linux will run it at full resolution on multiple monitors without the drivers and it has been with no trouble for the past few weeks. If nothing else, Linux is super flexible.
You're quite right about your main point. Apple's money comes directly from the user, while Google gets their money selling you to ad companies. Twitter and Facebook gets their money in the same fashion. Linux gets their money from governments and companies that rely on Linux, such as Google and Intel. You're also right that Apple does in fact, give some back to the open source community. Less than they take, but there is nothing wrong in that. And Microsoft is tied down by their OEMs.
However, Wave wasn't dropped. It's still alive and well. It was finished and is now put to use in actual products, such as Google Docs and Moderator, which are both excellent. RSS is possibly just a case of maintenance being a chore.
As for that comment about Apple things being delightful and effortless: I disagree. I really like Apple hardware. I like their stand-alone trackpad, magnetic cables, their laptops, and iMacs (I don't own a iMac, my boyfriends mom does, so I've used that one. I might get one down the road). But their UI's are far from delightful to use. Moving the cursor around feels like it was engineered to be as tedious as possible, like someone is subtly sticking needles into my muscles every time I look at the screen. Everything requires so many unnecessary clicks, and is very confusing. Just now, I was having problems with iTunes and syncing with an iPad 2. iTunes prints a error message in a dialog box. The only thing I can click is "ok". No option to solve the problem. The problem did not solve itself either after I let it alone for a few minutes. I tried Googling, and found no solution. And their Cocoa theme is ugly.
You go on to say the following
make the utter shitsack that is OSS user intarface / usabilty / compatibility / bugginess into something that actually works.
Now, last I checked, Apple is still not done transitioning to Gnome 3-mode in Mac OS, and they're slowly adding in more and more Gnome 3 features with every iteration, and never doing it quite as well. CLI rsync is a million times easier to use than TimeMachine, for example. Their software store is ugly and slow, Macs hate everything else on the network, even other Macs, and bugs are common on Mac OS X. Not saying they don't brand their stuff. Or don't contribute code back. They do. If you think of them as just one software company, they're doing pretty well I'd say. But they're hardly far above the rest of the world.
As for the comment about Ubuntu: Ubuntu has changed more in the past 5 years than Mac OS X has. And the privacy concerns of the Amazon thing were greatly exaggerated by nerds. If you enabled a feature by using software clearly labeled "Testing", Amazon could see what you type into the Dash, although anonymously. This was corrected before the product actually shipped. Now it's opt-in and searches are matched with a snapshot of Amazon on Canonical servers. Though Ubuntu is hardly representative for everything open source.
Comments
Personally, I learn and read a LOT more like this than I ever did using Reader; furthermore, I am keenly interested in everything I end up Pocketing, and my various social networks and Reddit subs are more tightly filtered and tuned to my interests than an RSS feed. Even now, my Reader extension is showing 1000+ unread articles, but most of them are things I don't really care about.
I don't care that Reader is going bye-bye. It's not that useful, for me.
Are there readers that can scrape the proper content of sites that only put the title in the RSS feed?
Screenshot:
I personally don't visit many websites. I'll go on the 2-3 forums I frequent, look at facebook/twitter/app.net messages I get, watch youtube channels I'm subscribed to, and peruse Reddit every once in a while. Those things combined are less than a quarter of what I'll read in a day, and the rest is either blogs, webcomics, toomblrs, or other feeds that all get piped into my reader. I skim a lot, and get news and such pretty quickly, and I can send long articles to Instapaper if I want to go in-depth.
Like I said before, it's not something to get up in arms about. It would be nice to see some innovation in this space, and Google just gave a bunch of indie devs the kick in the ass they needed.
EDIT: As for the "it's dying!" argument? Bitch I'm lurking on four IRC channels right now.
Still, I'm disappointed nothing so far seems to be able to understand that I have all my YouTubes in the YouTube folder, /and/ in the proper category. I mean, it's a super basic feature. Maybe Google reader doesn't export tags correctly? Miro seems to do podcasts well, so I guess I'll be moving to that for music. I do still regret giving up on adding feeds as easily as with Reader. Especially for YouTube.
One that sticks out to me is how well it keeps track of what I've missed since the last time I was online. I regularly go a week without reading any news or blogs, and when I get home, having 200 unread posts in Reader is super handy. I can flick through them all in about 20 minutes, clicking on headlines, reading posts, catching up with web comics, etc. If there is a big post I'll click keep unread or open it in a new tab to read later, and often stick it in Instapaper to read on my iPhone.
I'll certainly be looking for a Reader replacement in the future, and I'll be willing to pay for one to make sure it sticks around for a while. As long as they have a mobile version, I'll be fine.
(Sorry, had to do it).
----------------------
I figure that, if there is a true need for it, someone will essentially fill in Google Reader's gap and will probably do a better job. More than likely, the reason there isn't another perfect Google Reader is because Google already had one. *shrug*
Also, I wish I could remember all the days every single webcomic I read updates, because that's totally 100% consistent. RSS does not need to have the whole comic, or the whole article, or the whole podcast, just a link to the content. The primary goal of RSS is notification.
So Google is not only distancing itself from providing an RSS service it is also refusing to implement a client. This seems to be less about dropping an unprofitable service and more about trying to kill of a standard that is by construction impervious to third party forced ad revenues / injected content.
Hmph.
I don't like being sold to Google's customers and I have been fortunate enough to never have worked for one of Microsoft's customers.
People get hung up on the Evil/Good, Open/Closed arguments which are in my mind pretty misleading. A much better explanation and, indeed, predictor of a company's behaviour can be had by looking at where the money comes from. Apple has an iron grip on the App store and gives Flash the finger because that makes for a better user experience. Google kills of RSS and Wave because federated services can not be monetized by third party advertising. Microsoft has a hard time modernizing Windows because enterpise clients need their crappy ass window 3.1 era software to work and can't get the company focused behind a tablet effort because the OEM's will throw a fit. Nokia couldn't get a decent smartphone made because all of their phones were made to the order of telcos for market segments specified by the telcos. Facebook and Twitter fight tooth and nail against third party clients or integration efforts that could take data or user interaction out of their service because you and your actions / netowork is the only thing they can sell.
So yes, I will give Apple my money, because what they sell me they made for me and because of that they make sure their products are nice and delightful and effortless to use, and if they start making crappy stuff I'll stop giving them my money.
Finally, and I know you probably know this (and I know you may be trolling anyway), Apple does not sell me open source software. In the instances where Apple software is based on open source code they have put a shit ton of work into it to make the utter shitsack that is OSS user intarface / usabilty / compatibility / bugginess into something that actually works. Meanwhile Mark "I've been to Space" Shuttleworth can't seem to get his act together and do the same with "Linux on the desktop(tm - every year since 2001)" without getting caught selling out his "customers".
I love Linux and Unix for my work, I loved Windows while it was the only way to play games, I love Apple for getting usabilty right. I also hate Linux for being a bunch of neckbeards who only care about their own little sandboxes and don't give a damn about the paltform, I hate Windows... well I don't actually -- I just don't care at all, and I hate Apple not being robust (ass old filesystem, iCloud useless, TimeMachine flakey), not being suited for development (other than X-Code), and being very, very quirky (subtitle support for the AppleTV is crap, AirPlay for headless mac mini doesn't work).
/Rant ;-)
I agree on most of your points, though I do not agree with most of your useability points. Have you tried Linux in the last 10 years? Sure, it won't work perfectly out of the box with everything, but unlike OSX, if something doesn't work, you can actually do something about that. On OSX, it either works, or it doesn't. On most Linuxes, you can work on it, and make it do exactly what you want. On top of that, Linux now 'just works'. And I find it eminently useable. Gnome3 is a delight to use.
You also touched on some privacy concerns with Linux. I would like to point out that it was a big deal because of the expectations that Linux brings. Because of it's open-source nature. If Apple had done the same thing, sending results directly to Amazon, nobody would've said anything.
I just wanted to say these things. I don't disagree with you on most points.
However, Wave wasn't dropped. It's still alive and well. It was finished and is now put to use in actual products, such as Google Docs and Moderator, which are both excellent. RSS is possibly just a case of maintenance being a chore.
As for that comment about Apple things being delightful and effortless: I disagree. I really like Apple hardware. I like their stand-alone trackpad, magnetic cables, their laptops, and iMacs (I don't own a iMac, my boyfriends mom does, so I've used that one. I might get one down the road). But their UI's are far from delightful to use. Moving the cursor around feels like it was engineered to be as tedious as possible, like someone is subtly sticking needles into my muscles every time I look at the screen. Everything requires so many unnecessary clicks, and is very confusing. Just now, I was having problems with iTunes and syncing with an iPad 2. iTunes prints a error message in a dialog box. The only thing I can click is "ok". No option to solve the problem. The problem did not solve itself either after I let it alone for a few minutes. I tried Googling, and found no solution. And their Cocoa theme is ugly.
You go on to say the following Now, last I checked, Apple is still not done transitioning to Gnome 3-mode in Mac OS, and they're slowly adding in more and more Gnome 3 features with every iteration, and never doing it quite as well. CLI rsync is a million times easier to use than TimeMachine, for example. Their software store is ugly and slow, Macs hate everything else on the network, even other Macs, and bugs are common on Mac OS X. Not saying they don't brand their stuff. Or don't contribute code back. They do. If you think of them as just one software company, they're doing pretty well I'd say. But they're hardly far above the rest of the world.
As for the comment about Ubuntu: Ubuntu has changed more in the past 5 years than Mac OS X has. And the privacy concerns of the Amazon thing were greatly exaggerated
by nerds. If you enabled a feature by using software clearly labeled "Testing", Amazon could see what you type into the Dash, although anonymously. This was corrected before the product actually shipped. Now it's opt-in and searches are matched with a snapshot of Amazon on Canonical servers. Though Ubuntu is hardly representative for everything open source.