Slashdot Asks: How Will You Replace Google Reader? 335
Despite a hue and cry from disappointed users, Google has not made any moves to reverse its decision to close down Google Reader on the first of July, just a few weeks away. Despite the name — and the functions it started out with in 2001 — Reader has become more than a simple interface to RSS feeds; Wikipedia gives a concise explanation of how it evolved from just a few features to a full-blown platform of its own, incorporating social-sharing features of the kind that have become expected in many online apps. Those features have morphed over the years along with Google's larger social strategies, along the way upsetting some readers who'd grown used to certain features. If you're a Google Reader user, will you be replacing it with another aggregator?
Seems legit (Score:5, Informative)
www.commafeed.com
I've been trying feedly (Score:5, Informative)
If Life Wasn't So Busy, My Own (Score:5, Informative)
How Will You Replace Google Reader?
(Disclaimer: I'm going to use the term 'bandwidth' universally instead of the more correct 'latency' or 'throughput' so normal people can hopefully understand this post) The biggest problem I have with every alternative I have tried is that they are built with the most annoying design flaws. They are so painful to me that I am certain these flaws will be look back upon as the geocities of our modern day web development.
When I fire up an alternative, the responsiveness that was in Google Reader just isn't there. And it always seems like the alternatives require you to hit "refresh" on their interface and then what happens? It apparently makes a call out to every single RSS feed to get updates. On the surface this may seem like standard HTTP way of thinking about things. But it makes for a shit user experience. I have thousands of RSS feeds. Thousands. And if I hit refresh in this paradigm, my browser makes 1,000+ HTTP GET requests. It's not a lot of data but if even one of those requests is slow, it's usually blocking on ceding control back to me.
So let's iterate improvements on here that will get us back to Google Reader style responsiveness, shall we? Well, one of the simplest improvements I can see is to do these requests asynchronously with nonblocking web workers [mozilla.org]. You can attach each of them to the div or construct that each feed is displayed in and only have them work when that feed is visible (for instance if I am collapsing/expanding folders of feeds). You can grey out the feed until the request comes back but if another request returns first, it is parsed and inserted and activated to my vision. That way if cnn.com comes back faster than NASA's Photograph of the Day, I can read while waiting for my images.
But the core problem is that I'm on my home computer on a residential cable modem and, let's face it, Cox sucks. So what I think Google was doing was sacrificing their bandwidth to actually "reverse" the request from client to server. And, in doing so, they could package up all your updates and ship them out in one request (probably compressed). So, this is how I would approach that. Instead of doing a heart beat HTTP GET to check for RSS updates, I'd build a WebSocket [mozilla.org] and instead of requesting information, the client (browser) would be listening for information. The event/listener paradigm here would save both the user and the RSS host a lot of bandwidth but it would cost the host of the feed reader service some of that bandwidth (although much less). So basically the client JavaScript would load the page just like normal but instead of continually sending HTTP GET requests, a WebSocket would merely inform the server which feeds are active and listen for updates coming in from the server.
On the downside, this greatly complicates the server side. You need to have one be-all end-all "cache" or storage of all incoming feeds that any user is subscribed to. And for each of these feeds, you need to have a list of the users subscribed to it. And now your server will need to maintain the HTTP GET requests to cnn.com and NASA in order to get updates. When it gets an update, there's two ways you could handle it (user queues are complicated so I won't suggest that) but the most basic way is to send it right out to everyone on that subscription list who has an active WebSocket session established with their account. If a new WebSocket session is established, they simply get the last N stories from their subscriptions (Google included pagination backwards binned by time). To alleviate even more bandwidth from you, you could store it on the client side with HTML5 Web Storage and then the first thing the Web Socket does is find the last date on the last stored element and send that across to t
Newsblur (Score:3, Informative)
In the very worst case, you can stand up your own server, as we have access to the source: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur
Re:I've been trying feedly (Score:5, Informative)
Happy with NewsBlur (Score:4, Informative)
inoreader.com (Score:5, Informative)
I've been trying inoreader and have found it to be easy to use and fairly feature-rich.
Some highlights
- Easy import of all your Google reader feeds
- Lacking an android app, but one is planned and there is a mobile version of the site
- Fast
- Free
Re:I've been trying feedly (Score:5, Informative)
I switched to Feedly as well a few days after the announcement, and I've had no real issues with it. It works for my needs, both on the desktop and on the phone.
I've also noticed that since I'm not using GReader any more, I've stopped using G+ as well. Feedly's G+ link sharing seems a bit buggy, so I don't share there, and I don't feel the need or desire to check in on G+ any more one way or another. (Granted I barely share on Facebook either).
My only real beef is email sharing feels a bit cludgy compared to Reader, but even with Reader it wasn't as nice as it used to be.
Re:TheOldReader is promising (Score:5, Informative)
I think The Old Reader is the best replacement for Google Reader because it seems to be the only RSS reader I've found that is actually trying to do what Google Reader did. The others I've tried (specifically Feedly and Netvibes) seem to have different goals but can be adapted to behave similarly (but not the same) to Google Reader. I actually went with Netvibes for about the first month after the GR announcement because TOR was pretty lacking in the feature department and extremely slow due to the crush of new users. However, TOR had been rapidly updating the feature set, and I switched back over after they fixed up the mobile site and expanded their keyboard shortcuts among other tinngs (they've been great at adding features requested on the user feedback site).
When picking out a replacement to GR, I thought the most important thing was having the same goals as GR did in order provide the same functionality, and TOR has that in spades. I've never figured out why Feedly gets so much love in the GR replacement posts on tech sites. Need to install a browser extension? Yuck. The app wants to look like a magazine? Yuck. If you want to a pretty app to read articles like a magazine on your tablet, Feedly is nice, but it's not a replacement for Google Reader. The Old Reader is, especially now that the mobile site works as well as the Google Reader app ever did.
TinytinyRSS! (Score:5, Informative)
Netvibes and here's why (Score:5, Informative)
It seems like the RSS reader market is flooded with apps so it was difficult to find web-based services. I had grown used to the Reader look and feel so I settled on NetVibes as being the closest fit.
My main criticism is NetVibes is not as fast as Reader but otherwise the format and whatnot is perfectly usable.
Re:I replaced it ages ago (Score:4, Informative)
After getting some feedback on this usage of mine, and algo after seeing some other comments here, here are some hightlights:
+ IMAP takes care of the sincronization across devices.
+ There's a client for every device out there: the email client.
+ Achieving, deleting, marking as read/unread, flagging, all supported through IMAP as well.
Maybe rather than a web-based interface, this needs an email based interface (sort of like mailing lists).
tt-rss (Score:2, Informative)
I use tt-rss. It runs on my web server so i't always on, has mobile interfaces, runs in any browser. Try it.
http://tt-rss.org/ [tt-rss.org]
Re:Sod google reader (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yoleo Reader works for me (Score:3, Informative)
Hey all, this is Jamie Gilgen, the developer of Yoleo. The importer is very busy right now because of this post, it might take a little bit to import :)
Re:I've been trying feedly (Score:5, Informative)
I used Feedly for about a month after the Google Reader announcement, but the inability to export your feeds (as .opml or otherwise) was a deal-breaker for me. Their prescribed manner for exporting is to log into your Google account and grab it from there, which won't be an option for much longer, and last I had checked, they had not promised that they'd add the ability, despite increasingly vocal requests from the community.
So, rather than getting permanently locked into using Feedly, I went searching and ended up at The Old Reader [theoldreader.com], which seems to do a decent job. It doesn't have as much attention to detail, but it's clean, responsive, works well, and most importantly allows me to export my feeds. I wish it supported the ability to set per-folder and per-feed viewing options, rather than changing those options globally, and it'd be nice if it grabbed updates a bit more frequently, since I've noticed it can lag behind Google Reader by a few hours, but overall it's a better replacement for me than Feedly.
The runner-up for me as Comma Feed [commafeed.com], which also seems to be decent, but it had some quirks that made it annoying to use (e.g. if you wanted to mark more than one article as unread, you had to click the keep unread buttons for them from bottom-to-top, since interacting with an article down lower on the list would mark everything higher on the list as read). It was also noticeably slower to load articles when you clicked on a folder.
I use NSA Reader (Score:0, Informative)