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 4

Still doing this? Still doing this. I don’t know why it’s so hard to find an exact replica of Google Reader. I also don’t know why Google Reader is dying in the first place.

Next on the list is Netvibes.

Pros

---Can connect your Facebook and Twitter, among other things.

---You can organize your lists the way you want! I missed this about Reader.

---There are a lot of options for how you view it and settings in general.

---The next button actually makes sense (one of my complaints about Feedly).

Cons

---There’s no instant transfer from Reader like other sites. It’s a bit complicated, but you can transfer them over (I’ll explain in a bit).

---Honestly, it’s a bit complex to use. I have a feeling casual computer people (like me) won’t like that so much.

Really, this one isn’t bad at all. It works, unlike FeedReader, is less complex than Pulse, and has a few bonuses on Feedly. But is it better than our reigning champion? In my opinion, no, but it’s a close second. It’s a hair too complex for my tastes. Don’t get me wrong, all those options are nice. I think if you’re a social media maven, you should definitely go with Netvibes over Feedly because of its ability to connect with your Twitter, Facebook and email. But if you only want a reader, yeah, stick with Feedly.

If you decide to go with Netvibes, here’s how you import your lists:

1. Go here and click on the link to Takeout for your data.

2. When the blocks on the right are at 100%, click Create Archive.

3. Once it’s done loading, hit Download and sign in with your password.

4. Once it’s downloaded to your computer, click it and save it somewhere you’ll remember (by default, it will most likely be under your Downloads file.

5. Go to Netvibes. Scroll down to “It’s just me” and click Get Started.

6. Sign in and pick something (Default or Social or one of those) to follow. Go to the upper right hand corner and hit Sign Up.

7. Go to “Add Content” in the upper left hand corner, then select Add a Feed.

8. Click Import, then Choose File. Go to where you saved your Takeout from Reader. Click the file, and keep going until you see an XML document that says Subscriptions. Select it, and your lists will appear on your Netvibes dashboard.

BAM!

The Reader, part 3

Okay, so last week was a total disaster, but maybe Pulse is better. Although it would have to try very hard to be worse.

Pros

---Again, you can import all of your old feeds from Reader.

---The presentation is nice.

Cons

---How is literature not it their interests??

---It’s kind of annoying that I have to “pick interests”.

---It’s really frustrating that you can’t sign out. Once you sign in, you can’t get back to the homepage or the “Import from Reader” link. It is seriously not user friendly.

---I don’t like that it shows a bunch of pages from your post feeds. I only want the unread ones.

---There is no changing anything at all. You can’t alter titles, you can’t group lists, you can’t move things around. Again, not user friendly.

Overall, I’d say this thing is a lot more like Tumblr than a reader. It’s more image-based than word based, showing you pictures from the blog instead of the articles. I can see someone who’s more visual liking it, but I really didn’t. I want to see what my friends are saying, not look at pictures. I also like to have more control over how it’s displayed.

So, for those keeping track, Feedlyis still in the lead by a wide margin. I have to admit, I’m warming up to it.

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.

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 ; ).