Dammit, Google! I was using that!

[annathepiper]

For those of you who haven’t heard already, Google has announced that as part of a “spring cleaning”, they are shutting down Google Reader.

My previous solution was to use the RSS in Mail on OS X. But Apple yanked that out as of Mountain Lion (another instance of “Dammit, I was using that!”).

So now I’ve been doing a two-pronged solution of NetNewsWire parked as my local reader on my computer, which is where I keep up with authenticated feeds–and that synced in turn up to Google Reader, where I was keeping up with everything that wasn’t authenticated. That way I’ve been able to read things at work in between doing, well, work.

I tried feedHopper on my iPad, since it was the ONLY RSS app I was able to find that’d do authenticated feeds at all; all of the rest I looked at were strictly Google Reader clients. And I’ve also tried Flipboard, but honestly, the ‘magazine’ type layout doesn’t do anything for me. Yes, it’s pretty, but it’s not at all helpful in keeping track of what things I’ve read and what things I haven’t. Which is the whole point of me trying to aggregate all the things I want to follow in one or two places.

But now that Google Reader’s going away I’m going to have to rearrange things AGAIN!

What will have to happen now: find out whether NetNewsWire, my current frontrunner for RSS apps, will implement any kind of syncing solution between computer, devices, and web, maybe via iCloud. If they do that, I will happily throw them my money.

Alternately, if anybody out there wants to recommend me an app that will a) specifically handle authenticated feeds, and b) sync between computer, devices, and web, I’d LOVE to hear about it.

If you want to go hunting for a new RSS solution yourself, I’ll also point you at these links:

• Feedly has a transition plan in play
• ExtremeTech proposes 8 alternatives
• Slashdot to the rescue!
• Marketing Land proposes 12 alternatives (many of which are also in the ExtremeTech article, but)

ETA: Apparently there’s a petition to ask Google to keep Reader active. As of this ETA, it has nearly 75,000 signatures.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Comments

[zeborah]

I've imported stuff into NetVibes; it's being a little clunky but not sure if that's inherent or me just not used to it yet.

[annathepiper]

*goes and looks at website of NetVibes*

WOW, a lot of marketingese all over that. I'll be interested in your opinion of the actual product after you take it for a few test runs!

[zeborah]

Oh yeah, it looks a bit terrible on the way in. What you need to do is to first remove the widgets for the default junk they throw in there (random news sites and nonsense, I dunno), then "Add content" to import your own OPML (Google Takeout's subscriptions.xml file), and then you can use it pretty much like Google Reader.

The grey right-angled boxes are a bit ugly for my tastes but when I'm reading things it all just works. I should test out other places, but could well end up sticking with this.

[annathepiper]

Do you know if it does authenticated feeds?

Really, I'm kinda hoping NetNewsWire, my current choice for dealing with locked feeds, will announce an update to account for Google Reader's loss. They've got a desktop app that talks to authenticated feeds, AND device apps to cover the public stuff, and if they deploy some sort of syncing solution I'll be set.

Web-facing access to the public feeds would be ideal but not a dealbreaker if not there!

[feuervogel]

I just started using Feedly (which has mobile apps, IDK how they sync), and the GReader import is painless.

[annathepiper]

I've been hearing about Feedly all over the place, yeah. From what I've been seeing, they will sync between browsers and devices.

But the real question for me is whether they have a way of handling authenticated content--like here on Dreamwidth, or over on LJ. I don't really need to actually sync the authenticated content, but it'd be nice to have something that keeps that stuff local to my computer while syncing the public feeds across to web or devices or whatever.

[mmegaera]

If there's one thing I hate about the internet in specific and computer programs in general, it's that the rate of change is far, far, far too fast. Dammit.

[annathepiper]

Yes. And oftentimes it's change "for a fresh design" (when there was NOTHING WRONG WITH THE OLD ONE DAMMIT), or even worse, "because some other competing site is doing it so we have to look like them to drum up more users".