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Google Reader Being Retired
Edgewood_Dirk writes "According to the official blog, Google Reader is being retired on July 1st, 2013. The main reasoning seems to be its decline in usage over the last few years. Users and developers will be able to retrieve their RSS data using Google Takeout."
Netvibes is a good alternative that has a "Reader" mode plus a widget mode. However one thing I noticed with both Google Reader and especially Netvibes is it can choke and become sluggish with several thousand unread items in my browser.
As far as native clients go in Linuxland, Liferea is a maturing and blazingly fast GTK client that suits my needs.
I have over 200 reads. TheOldReader dies after importing 3 .... so no, it's not an alternative.
From Samuel Clay's twitter posts today - https://twitter.com/NewsBlur. Remember, NewsBlur is 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Android). Follow @samuelclay on GitHub: http://github.com/samuelclay. Today's not such a hot day in terms of speed, but the next three months will be full throttle. I was preparing to launch the re-design in TWO weeks, not today. I'm spinning up more servers to handle the onslaught.
I like both of these services, and use them... but they are very different from Reader. Reader is for feeds that I read over 60% of, and want to read every day. Pulse and Taptu are for things I browse, where I might want to read a single article from in a week or so, time willing.
I'm getting a bit sick of Google. I still don't know what to do when they kill iGoogle, I like having my mail, (soon to be dead) feeds, weather. and Slashdot on one page, along with the always useful search. I'm guessing I'm going to have to just use Windows 8 tiles instead, which probably isn't Google's preferable action. I'm sure they want me to use Google+ for all this, or something else (Chrome apps) that they will kill in another year, or just can't be bothered to support (like Reader, at this moment).
What really irks me is that Reader is about all I use my Nexus 7 for these days outside of IMDB and stupid searches.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I used to use Google Reader but switched to Netvibes long ago. Provides the same features, similiar interface, but a lot more under the hood and better theme selection/customization imo. Plus, it's not Google, which is a big plus for me. Anything non-MS, non-Apple, non-Oracle, non-Google is a huge win in my book. Just my two cents, since you asked for recommendations.
Its also famous for making sure you can get your data and get out.
http://www.dataliberation.org/
Any company can drop products. Google has consistently managed to not be a jerk about it.
After messing around for an hour trying NewsBlur to work, I exported my RSS data from Google Reader and imported it to Thunderbird. Bye bye Google Reader.
If you want an open source, host-it-yourself web-app then there's Tiny Tiny RSS, as recommended by a co-worker.
The site's been up and down all day for some completely inexplicable reason, but the brief glimpse I got of the live demo was pretty impressive. I escaped Google Reader nearly a year ago (the Google Plus 'integration' had been annoying me, and in a fit of pique I got rid of all Google dependencies I had) and while I've been mostly happy with the desktop-app Vienna RSS for Mac OS X, further alternatives are always welcome. I imagine someone will get an open cross-client sync working now that Google Reader is going away...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
TheOldReader is all about social whoring and very little about being a cross platform syncing reader.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
And most reader users were happy to see the social Bullshit deleted.
All we ever wanted was a cross platform reader that would sync and organize your feeds.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.