The Reader, part the last

It’s probably time to wrap this up. Six weeks is getting to be a bit much. So here’s the rundown on all the sites, winners in their own ways. Mostly by sucking.

The Good

Winner, easiest transition category: Feedly

Winner, best social media connector: Netvibes/Bloglines

Winner, if you’re willing to download: FeedDemon

The Bad

Winner, most impossible to figure out the workings of: Pulse

Winner, as long as you only follow famous blogs: Good Noows

Winner, OMG you expect me to resubscribe to all my blogs? Ever heard of imports?: News Alloy

Winner, but only for Apple: Reeder

Winner, if you’re really desperate and want to download one but seriously you can find something better (tie): RSSOwl and RSS Reader

The Ugly

Winner, d!ck move by making it a subscribed service when Reader announced it was dying, NewsBlur

Winner, we have to nuke it from orbit to be sure, FeedReader

Winner, most awesome site that disappeared without a trace, Feedlooks

Winner, totally broken, (tie) FeedShow and Rssminer

So those are your choices. I mean, if you’re not one of those people who doesn’t use Reader and doesn’t have to worry about how s/he’s going to visit blogs. Personally, I’m sticking with Feedly. Although Netvibes was did give it a run for its money, I prefer not to keep all my social media sites on one page (I’m just like that) and I find it a bit easier to use and organize. For you guys, I’d recommend you go with whichever one of “The Good” fits your style best.

Unless Google comes to its senses and decides to keep Reader going. Please? Anything? No? Damn it.

The Reader, part 5

It is 5, right? My God, I’ve been doing this for a solid month? It might be time to start wrapping this up… 

Anyway, the readers I’ve focused on for the past four entries I’ve spent time using, but there are also quite a few that I dismissed right away as not workable for whatever reason. So here’s the rundown on some of the other aggregators out there.

NewsBlur

---“Due to overwhelming demand, free accounts are now suspended.” That’s adorable. They actually think people are going to pay for a freaking aggregator (it did look nice from what I saw in the free sample, though).

Bloglines

---Since it’s run by Net Vibes, it’s basically a clone of their system. So it’s good to use if for some reason you don’t like the name Net Vibes.

Good Noows

---Made for following news stories in topics like science or even comics, but not really for personal blogs. Also, I hate the name.

Feedlooks

---Got rave reviews…then completely shut down.

Feed Show

---I couldn’t actually get it to work. Not very sophisticated from what I saw.

News Alloy

---Have to resubscribe to every single feed I want to follow. No thanks.

Reeder

---For Apple products only, so I can’t use it.

RSSOwl

---A downloadable program you use. Not really what I’m looking for.

Rssminer

---The site is broken so I can’t really review it. Honestly, with a tagline like “yet another feed reader”, I wouldn’t expect much.

RSS Reader

---Another download. Pass.

FeedDemon

---Yet another download. However, this is supposed to be one of the best, so if you’re willing to try it, I’d expect it to be good.

The Reader, part 2

For the record, I am still hella bummed about this and pray against all odds that it won’t disappear into cyber oblivion. I guess I like being disappointed.

This week, I tested out FeedReader.

Pros:

---The presentation of the posts is good.

Cons:

---Their claim to be able to import from Reader is kind of diminished by the fact that the slowness of the website (I’m guessing their servers weren’t prepared for the Google exodus, which does not bode well for site management). This means ninety percent of the blogs I follow don’t show up.

---Wait, you can’t alter the view at all?

---Speaking of view, there’s no lists, or adjusting order of posts, or literally anything. I’m starting to regret pledging a week to this site. For the record, I’m writing this ten minutes after I first started using it.

---You can’t even quickly jump through posts, either by a next button or clicking. You have to scroll. Seriously, I’m starting to think this whole site is an elaborate prank.

---Three days into it and it still hasn’t downloaded all of my Reader blogs. Or even most of them. Hell, not even half. Like, sixteen out of sixty, and that’s all it gets no matter how often I try to “sync” with Google. I wouldn’t care if I had to download them all manually, but they claimed I could import it from Reader. Huge fail.

Even if it worked properly, I honestly don’t see it as being useful for anyone who follows more than a few blogs, which kind of defeats the purpose of the internet. It’s not easy to navigate, you can’t group anything, hell, you can’t do anything at all to it. I might as well bookmark the sites and visit them individually for all the good FeedReader has done. Overall: STAY AWAY FROM FEEDREADER. Don’t even bother.

I gave you a week of my life, FeedReader, and now I can never get it back. Clearly the only way for me to get justice is to eliminate you entirely and make sure no one else suffers like I did.

I hate you, FeedReader. Sleep with one eye open.

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 ; ).