Kicking Us When We’re Down

It was announced in March, but in the hubbub over Reader (sob), I overlooked it (I certainly didn’t see a notice for it like others did). The horrible news is…TweetDeck is being canceled. Murdered, if you will. I assume because it’s something I like. Also because they can’t really make money on advertising when people go through the desktop app, but like I care about that.

In all fairness, it’s not being completely taken away—in exactly one week, I might add. It will still be available as a web service, much like all the aggregators I’ve been reviewing over the past month. But I used the desktop version, amusing since I also posted how I didn’t like desktop readers. I just think it’s different with Twitter. I like to check it, well, a lot, and I’m often online at the same time. For whatever reason, I prefer to keep my TweetDeck separate from my online stuff.

Right now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I could go with the online version of TweetDeck, even if I really don’t want to. I could also switch to another desktop app, of which there are painfully few. There’s one called MetroTwit, which isn’t terrible, but it starts up very slowly for me. This might be my computer, which isn’t exactly high tech. Either way, I’m not sure I’d like to put up with this every time I open the dang thing. However, it’s also a pretty nice app. It shows my new mentions/messages when I open it, I was easily able to customize it similar to my TweetDeck set up in the few ways it wasn’t already a close copy, and most importantly, I’m able to send a tweet by hitting enter. Yes, that is very important to me.

So I’m caught between the online TweetDeck and MetroTwit. They’re pretty neck and neck right now. I’ll have to muse on this some more.

Hey. This is serious business.

The Reader, Part 1

With Google Reader’s demise little more than three months away, I have to start looking for a new reader for my blog feeds. There are quite a few out there, but they have to meet my stringent standards if they want me to use them. So I’m going to spend a week with the different possibilities and see which one is the best.

What, did you think it was about book readers? Sorry, but there are more important things to worry about right now.

First up, Feedly.

First of all, I used this in Chrome so your mileage may vary depending on your browser.

Pros

---I was able to import my blog feeds from Reader (I hope this sticks after it disappears).

---Very easy to access my lists and change them around (easier than Reader, in fact).

---They have this thing called the Feedly Mini, which is how you can share things on Twitter.
---Navigation is very easy.
---I like how it shows only the blogs with new posts in my blog list. Usually those are the only ones I want to see and it’s easy to click if I want to see the others.
---There's a wide variety of options to view the posts with.

Cons

---The presentation could be better—themes have fancy names, but just change the color. Whee.
---Posts come up in the standard Feedly font and colors rather than whatever the blogger chooses.

---I don’t like that it sorted my lists alphabetically. I have my own order.

---I hate that I can’t go to my reader with the click of a button anymore. Not that I’ll be able to do so after July…
---It would be nice if the Feedly Mini, I don’t know had the ability to take you to the Feedly homepage. Seriously, how is that not there?
---The next button doesn’t actually click to the next one in your list. It’s...confusing. I still haven’t quite figured it out.

Overall, it’s kind of a watered-down Reader clone. Not great, not terrible. I’ll use it if I don’t find anything better and I won’t complain about it toomuch.

In Memorium

We are gathered here today to mourn the future loss of a dear friend: Google Reader, who is due to expire on July 1st of this year. I’ve known GR for only a few years, but they were great years. He taught me how to organize lists of my favorite blogs and easily click through posts. And if I wanted to save the post or favorite it, why, he was more than happy to oblige. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t terrible good with computers. He was easy to work with and required little from me, like a good aggregator should.

Seriously, Google. What. The. Hell. “Usage is down”? “It’s time to focus on other products”? Reader needs to be “retired”? You have email. You have maps. You have the freaking king of search engines. You dominate almost every other facet of internet usage. If you want to get rid of unwieldy, redundant programs, eliminate Google+ because Facebook is a thing and leave Reader alone. And the gall to call it “retirement”. Come on. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and is being discontinued like a duck, I think you might have a discontinued duck.

Don’t involve me in this mess.

There’s actually a petition going on at Change.org. Because why not? Petitions are what internet people do. And honestly, they’re about as likely to listen to us as they are to realize on their own that killing it is a dumb idea. No, it’s not going to do anything unless every user manages to band together and sign it, but accepting defeat is the first step toward failure. Or something.

Anyway, you can download your Reader data if there’s anything there you don’t want to lose. I’m going to go start looking for another blog reader. Maybe we should do like a reality show and have all the aggregators try to prove why they’re the best one for me ; ).