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?
Sod google reader (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sod google reader (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm going to miss igoogle :(
+1. iGoogle is/was a great homepage.
I've got a list of alternatives to iGoogle somewhere (there are 3-4 that look decent), but I've yet to spend the time to actually look at any of them.
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iGoogle is my portal to /.
Re:Sod google reader (Score:4, Interesting)
Check out http://www.ighome.com
It doesn't look quite as nice as iGoogle, but it's close enough.
Re:Sod google reader (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sod google reader (Score:4, Insightful)
I went from MyYahoo to iGoogle years ago. It's sad to think I might return. Getting you to use a their web site as a home page used to be the gold mine all companies strive for. I don't understand why Google would give this up. Especially without presenting a Google alternative well before the expiration.
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I've been using Bing Reader (BReader) for awhile now, absolutely love it! Everything that Google Reader should have been ! iBing isn't too shabby either!
Good to see MS is supporting RSS now.
Seems legit (Score:5, Informative)
www.commafeed.com
With NSA Reader! (Score:5, Funny)
The NSA already reads all the feeds I subscribe to so I don't have to!
I've been trying feedly (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I've been trying feedly (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I've been trying feedly (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I switched to Feedly a few hours after Google told me they didn't want me to get news from them anymore. I think it's pretty good. The thing I miss from GR is using 'n' and 'p' to read the next and previous news stories. Feedly's documentation swears that it supports keyboard shortcuts, but it doesn't work for me on any of my machines. The layout is usually pretty nice. I'd like more features, but the basic implementation is a satisfactory replacement for Reader.
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Re:I've been trying feedly (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing that put me off feedly was the requirement for a browser extension. Why on earth would you need a browser extension for what ought to be a simple website?
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I've gone with Netvibes, more as a replacement for iGoogle rather than Reader. It doesn't have the multiple device sync'ing that reader did but it does make a nice homepage and I've just got used to having to ignore the RSS items which I've already on PC or Mobile when viewing from the other device.
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Why on earth would you need a website for what ought to be a simple RSS reader?
Re:I've been trying feedly (Score:5, Insightful)
Why on earth would you need a website for what ought to be a simple RSS reader?
It feels neater architecturally. If 1000 people use a desktop RSS reader set to poll every 5 minutes, the feed gets 1000 hits every 5 minutes. If they all use a service like Reader (and it's sensibly written) then the feed gets one hit every 5 minutes.
It has the convenience of giving you all your items, with your unread flags up-to-date, wherever you're reading (home, work, mobile, ...).
It empowers the provider to generate good "people who liked this also liked..." recommendations -- whether you find that useful, scary or both.
Re:I've been trying feedly (Score:5, Funny)
Why on earth would you need a website for what ought to be a simple RSS reader?
Its an NSA requirement.
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I agree, in particular because I recently switched back to Opera. I use feedly on my iPhone and iPad, but I don't really use those much at work. I still like browsing articles while waiting for compiles to finish, though, so it's a bit lame to not have a reader that works in my browser. :/
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:I've been trying feedly (Score:4, Insightful)
Android client on Feedly always uses their built-in shitty browser. No thanks. I need their client to allow me to pick a default browser (FF + Adblock). Until that happens, no Feedly for you!
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.
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
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Yeah, after trying some of the alternatives, I was also planning to write my own -- although it's getting a bit late now. Google should have given us maybe a year or two of notice. I was going to do the polling on my webserver, send items as E-mail and then knock something up to view them using luakit.
Why do I need an aggregator? (Score:5, Insightful)
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OK. So what does that? Genuinely curious, not found an option I like yet.
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This, except I don't care about synching. Thunderbird does everything I need.
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I switched to thunderbird as well. My favorite feature: no single company can cut my access to this reader.
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Disadvantage with a local reader (not backed by an online aggregator): If you are offline for a few days, you miss all that news. Maybe that's okay by you.
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You're almost there. You need one that's multiplatform with read/unread syncing...maybe web based? Like Google Reader? Which is an aggregator!
liferea (Score:2)
liferea does everything I need. prefer a local application, as it means I can read through the feeds on the train.
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
Yoleo Reader works for me (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been using http://yoleoreader.com/ [yoleoreader.com] for the last few days and it works well for me. It even pulled the existing feeds directly from Google since I signed on with Google Account.
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I lasted about 5 minutes with Yoleo and gave up. I don't like the layout and it doesn't seem to be configurable and it failed to import many of my reader feeds.
If nothing web based turns up that is half decent I will go with "newsfox" add on for firefox which does a half decent job. But I would prefer a web based client like reader.
Re: (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 :)
TheOldReader is promising (Score:3)
I'm really seriously considering going with http://theoldreader.com/ as they're the only ones who are even attempting to make a mobile website. However, their mobile site's layout is quite cumbersome to use and desperately needs fixing.
Everyone else seems overly obsessed with being "app first, screw the rest," where said apps don't run on my phone platform of choice. But if any 3rd party apps I actually can run will support other sites in time, I may give them a shot too.
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.
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I couldn't stand what feedly and netvibes were trying to do. I imported my feeds into both The Old Reader and newsblur and newsblur is what stuck. The two things I didn't like about the old reader was that they were having trouble keeping stuff up to date and that they didn't wrap the content to a smaller, more readable width like Reader used to do. Otherwise I liked that they were even simpler than newsblur.
Self-hosted TinyTinyRSS (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll go for a self-hosted tinytinyRSS: http://tt-rss.org/
Never cared much for all the social features, I like keeping up with websites and being absolutely sure I haven't missed anything.
I'm not sure why I sign into google anymore. No need for reader. Youtube favs I suppose.
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Re:Self-hosted TinyTinyRSS (Score:4, Interesting)
Fox can be a little gruff, but considering the volume of stupid questions suddenly coming in to a one-man project with the death of google reader, I can't say I blame him.
IFTTT (Score:2)
Happy with NewsBlur (Score:4, Informative)
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I was also trying theoldreader and one other place I can't remember the name of. theoldreader was good but they were having growing pains with all the new users (feeds weren't updating well) and so newsblur was the site
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+1 .. NewsBlur works greatly for me too. And it's open source so at least I'm not worried about perenity.
Tried feedly, gone over to newsblur (Score:2)
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
Isn't it open source? (Score:2)
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No, it wasn't open source, sorry!
Someone could create a clone. I'm curious as to why that hasn't happened. Probably no interested developers.
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Feedly has created a clone, at least for the backend, which is all I care about. Their front end is pretty awful, but I'm hoping some good front ends come along or some of the old ones that used GR as a backend switch over.
I switched to feedly (Score:2)
Switched, but not happy. (Score:3)
I've completely switched over to NetVibes, but I'm not happy about it. The Netvibes web page is slow to load and has buggy UI on every browser I've tried, especially on mobile platforms. But it does what I want it to do, which is give me my RSS feeds synched on several different devices, and it allows me to permanently save some articles.
TheOldReader probably has better UI -- because it's simpler -- but I don't believe it has the 'save' functionality that I need. Feedly is just god awful for what I need. Bloglines is NetVibes -- literally, it's a front-end for the same service. I don't know of any others that have what I want, but if I find one I'm ready to switch again in a heartbeat.
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Similar experience with netvibes - it normally starts up blank on my Android phone, I just have to hit refresh. Once in a while it'll tell me I have a negative number of things unread. It has trouble keeping a consistent count of unread items between the title, the menu, and its own 'refresh' button. Oh, and the 'Load More' button appears off the end of my screen sometimes. These are mostly minor annoyances I can live with.
Google Reader never did anything wrong, though.
newsblur (Score:2)
I've been really happy with http://newsblur.com/ [newsblur.com] . It has pretty much every feature of reader I cared about, with a better interface and a very dedicated individual working hard behind the scenes.
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Don't forget it's fully open-source so you can run your own server if you desire (or contribute fixes if so inclined).
Thank you! (Score:2)
This is what I've been looking for! I was trying Feedly, but their interface isn't nearly as responsive or well-organized.
Google's loss (Score:5, Insightful)
Really bummed that Google Reader is closing. But if Google is no longer interested in my news reading habits then it's their loss. And I'll no longer be logged-in to Google all day. So it's really their loss. But a huge gain for my privacy.
At work using Windows RSS Owl is looking like my best choice. Akregator for Linux. Not yet sure what I'll use on Mac.
Re:Google's loss (Score:4, Interesting)
And I'll no longer be logged-in to Google all day. So it's really their loss
Mod parent up -- this is a good point. The only reason I'm logged into Google is for Reader. I only know of stuff happening on Google Plus because it pops up in the corner of the screen. Now Google Plus will also completely disappear from my life.
Reeder or Feedly (Score:2)
The Old Reader (Score:2)
YMMV of course, but I find it a suitable replacement personally.
OwnCloud News (Score:3)
When Google announced the closure of Reader, OwnCloud started work on a news reader app [github.com] too. I've been running it since the beta and I'm very happy.
NewsBlur (Score:2)
rsslounge^Wselfoss (Score:3)
Several months before Google's announcement, I was fed up with some details regarding Google Reader (namely, going always through *their* servers according to *their* conditions). Given I am a systems adminstrator and have the ability (and little extra bandwidth) to self-host that service for myself, I installed a rssLounge instance.
I now learn rssLounge has been renamed to selfoss [aditu.de]. I have yet to check this new version — but leaving minor glitches aside, rssLounge has me quite happy.
TinytinyRSS! (Score:5, Informative)
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I second this. I set it up on my home cable modem connection and it works great. It would be even more responsive if I put it on my dirt-cheap VPS account server, I just haven't bothered since the cable modem works fine. They keep changing the Android app and adding annoying animations, but it still works *much* better than Feedly and doesn't require giving some third-party access to all of my browsing history.
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.
Got this via Netvibes... (Score:2)
Which works quite well. I also tried Feedly, but that comes with a weird Firefox add-on that causes high power consumption on battery...
Hive (Score:2)
I have been trying http://hivereader.com/ [hivereader.com] part time, while I use Feedly full-time. Hive shows a lot of promise.
I replaced it ages ago (Score:4, Interesting)
I replaced it ages ago, with a simple python script croned every 15 minutes. It picks up new entries to my feeds, and emails them to me. Sieve filters those emails into a different mailbox, so I've a special mailbox which is basically entries for my rss feeds.
I don't know why I've never made a web interface for that, it might become pretty popular. :P
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).
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Any chance you can bung said script on github?
I replace it how I replace everything... (Score:2)
with a small perl script.
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]
Best Windows RSS Reader (Score:2)
Sharpreader
sharpreader.net
It's old and hasn't been updated in forever, but it's clean, simple, and fast. Faster than any other reader I've tried (such as RSS Owl or Liferea).
Newsbeuter (Score:2)
For a fairly drop-in relacement, tt-rss (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wrote my own (Score:3)
Feedly (Score:2)
Tiny Tiny RSS (tt-rss) and the Android app. (Score:3, Insightful)
I tried both Feedly and NewsBlur, and both did a lot of things I did not want or need. They were pretty, but when it came down it it I was losing control of my important feeds.
I had to upgrade my ancient Linux server (it was overdue) before I could install it (although I think they might have relaxed some of the requirements now)
I am very happy with it now. It is lean and light, clean and works flawlessly for me.
The android app is written by the developer and rivals that of Google Reader. (clean and simple) Although it is paid... but I don't mind paying for it for all I got.
I can recommend it to everyone who feels a bit of reticence and want and alternative.
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I'm actually happier now with Tiny Tiny RSS than I was with Google Reader. I have a lot more control and how often feeds are read, there are more options to customize the interface, and I can add feeds from my local network as well.
https://code.google.com/p/ttrss-reader-fork/ [google.com] is a free (and improved) fork of the Tiny Tiny RSS Reader Android app.
Feedly FTW (Score:2)
Already have replaced Google Reader with Feedly... MUCH better than Reader ever was..
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The Old Reader (Score:3)
The Old Reader is almost as good as Google Reader for my use. I just want a simple web browser based list of my article subscriptions.
I tried Feedly, and other "replacements" but they were just too annoying with their stupid swiping and web browser plugins.
Why not Email? (Score:3)
I never understood this desire to put everything as a web service.
Why is RSS not just an Email mailer that can send news to my Email address?
IMAP is perfect for it, and POP3 is also capable. Plus you have encryption (IMAPS), user management, and you don't need Yet Another App.
There is for example rss2email [allthingsrss.com] that can receive RSS feeds and send them as Email. Here is come better documentation: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Rss2email [archlinux.org]
ownCloud News (Score:3)
Okay, so I'm using EC2 for the server at the moment, thus relying on a third party again. But since it's ownCloud, I can back up and reimport my entire setup on any webserver I control anywhere, so if Amazon self-destructs or such I'm not left searching for another full solution stack. Never again. Plus, well, I'm a KDE user, and integration in Akregator is coming down the line in theory. So I'll be able to have discrete desktop and mobile apps for a web service that I can put up wherever I have hosting. That's not a solution for everyone per se (although if any of my friends want to use it I'll obviously give them accounts) but it's a pretty perfect replacement for my own needs.
Digg Reader (Score:3)
Unfortunately none of the alternatives I looked at could manage that. From non-working sites, to ghastly user interface design, to one which requires a browser plug-in just to work (seriously wtf?).
On that basis, I'm really hoping that Digg Reader (whenever it arrives) doesn't suck. If it does, then I don't think there are any viable alternatives.
Tiny Tiny Rss (Score:3)
Not perfect, but it's pretty close and I store everything on my own server.
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This isn't sufficient.
Some of my feeds update several times a day, and yes, it would be OK to just check back regularly.
Other feeds update irregularly, sometimes with weeks or months between updates. I still want to see those updates, and I want to see them reasonably promptly. It's dumb not to automate the checking of those sites, and RSS is the rational way to achieve it.
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I follow over 60 sites. If I could manually check each one in 5 seconds, it would take me 5 minutes - not counting the actual reading. With a "freaking 24/7/365 watchbot", that's down to, essentially, zero.
Now, of course, it would be even quicker to go cold turkey and drop all those blogs. I don't want to do that; why should I?
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unless you like to read a wide variety of things i have in my desktop email/rss reader over 70 feed many of those are from aggregators/webspiders that scower the web looking for more content on a specific subject giving me a feed, rss for people who enjoy reading or need to stay up to date on things is great.
oh and its pretty good for torrents too.
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Ditto.
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You must have a lot of spare time. I just want to zip through the news looking for anything that interests me. That is when an RSS reader really helps. I don't have time to load up 10 websites 5 times a day, re-reading the same headlines many times over. Going back to that would be like going back to writing with quill and parchment instead of using a keyboard and screen.
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Clicking on 4 bookmarks in the morning is not a great hardship. I might click on them again at lunch. I'm certain that it doesn't materially impact my spare time.
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That's great if you're only interested in 4 sites. What if you're interested in 60?
Re:I can't replace something I never use. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. Why should we be subjected to articles about stuff you know nothing about?
Indeed, the articles should only relate to areas of your expertise, like realtime midget scat porn, and arithmetic for 'tards.
Looking forward to your daily updates.
cheers,
Re:I don't need to (Score:5, Insightful)
Google: "Here, let me do this free awesome thing for you. I'll be taking notes of course, but you know that."
Gweihir: "How LONG are you going to do it for me?!?"
Google: "Uh, probably a few years at least. And you can use someone else's service if you want when we stop, we'll make it really easy to do so. Like, one button push."
Gweihir: "So, not forever?"
Google: "Well, no, but it's not like we're charging you for..."
Gweihir: "EVIL!!! OMG, YOU'RE JUST LOOKING FOR A PROFIT!!! FUCK YOU!!!"
Yeah, you definitely dodged a bullet there.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll second http://gwene.org/ [gwene.org]
It will turn any RSS to newsgroup, and you can read those with any NNTP newsreader (for which I already have setup .newsrc syncing between accounts).