RSS feed reader options - the saga continues

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhpyfkuXCw7u5i5XIDd4wzsZiqThLfodaOKjpjFrHY2o5sdiDrlQNb_FUNpY6pmoCa9mG9AX_tvLZfGWXk442ck_3cFwJeJNmvk9-SGOHnV4nZ59ymd9liXo3MGXGs0iUZNV0qozy3FKct/s454/rss-orange-radar-bar-chicklet-icon.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhpyfkuXCw7u5i5XIDd4wzsZiqThLfodaOKjpjFrHY2o5sdiDrlQNb_FUNpY6pmoCa9mG9AX_tvLZfGWXk442ck_3cFwJeJNmvk9-SGOHnV4nZ59ymd9liXo3MGXGs0iUZNV0qozy3FKct/s454/rss-orange-radar-bar-chicklet-icon.png" width="280" /></a></div>When Google Reader was retired, I posted about <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2013/06/choosing-replacement-for-google-reader.html">my search for a replacement</a>.<br /><br />Eventually I settled on <a href="http://www.theoldreader.com/" target="_blank">TheOldReader</a>.   This had a few headaches - too many other people made the same choice, so they had performance problems.  Then they were going to shut down.   They they got help and weren't shutting any more.   Now they've siaid that only the first 100 subscriptions are free, and that people need to pay to have more than this.   The design still looks a bit clunky.<br /><br />I may yet end up paying them $30/year - it's not unreasonable for the service.   But OTOH, I don't see paying a small amount for any service as a guarantee that it will actually survive.<br /><br />But in the meantime, I'm hunting for options again.    Here's some info about what I've tried.<br /><br /><br /><a name="more"></a><br /><br /><h2>InoReader</h2>The first tool that has caught my eye is <b><a href="https://inoreader.com/" target="_blank">InoReader</a></b>.   It is<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">... a </span><a class="bluelink boldlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service" style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #0069d6; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Cloud based</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;"> </span><a class="bluelink boldlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_aggregator" style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #0069d6; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">RSS Reader</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;"> aimed to fully replace </span><a class="bluelink boldlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_reader" style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #0069d6; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Google Reader</a> <span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">and even provide additional tools and functionalities for power users.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">Initially it came to life as a </span><a class="bluelink boldlink" href="https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-reader-diaspora/3Koz-7SNdRk/xT4TgIsKxcYJ" style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #0069d6; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">proof of concept project</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">, but the author quickly realized that such system cannot be managed and handled by single person for a long time, so the development and support was handled to a company ...</span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span> You can register separately, or log in using Facebook or Google accounts. It will import subscription files from the reader part of Google's Takeout file, or other OPML format files.

RSS feed reader options - the saga continues

When Google Reader was retired, I posted about my search for a replacement . Eventually I settled on TheOldReader .   This had a few headach...

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Choosing a replacement for Google Reader

<b>This post tells the story of my choosing a replacement for Google reader.</b><br /><br /><br /><div style="clear: both;"></div><a name="more"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoKsnIxPR8hRD3zlIROfwmIyhJ_XvHLK9DF9oaDCcCShNi5phygkHn4wXyz3efThL9uY33dd3cGvd4obYBcaSI8EjN1Munn7Ua9gtS99i0Xlkr7Yp35LP7tvpMdazq9an_VZATg2S2y2yt/s217/quick-tips-blogger-hints-and-tips.png.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /><img alt="quick-tips logo" border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoKsnIxPR8hRD3zlIROfwmIyhJ_XvHLK9DF9oaDCcCShNi5phygkHn4wXyz3efThL9uY33dd3cGvd4obYBcaSI8EjN1Munn7Ua9gtS99i0Xlkr7Yp35LP7tvpMdazq9an_VZATg2S2y2yt/s217/quick-tips-blogger-hints-and-tips.png.png" title="Quick tips for Blogger Users - especially about how Blogger works with other popular tools" width="200" /></a></div>Every so often, I do a post here on Blogger-HAT which is a little "different".<br /><br />Today, I'm starting the quest to choose a replacement for Google Reader (yes, the turn-off was announced back in <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2013/03/march-2013-product-cancellations-from-google.html">March</a>, but there's no point in starting these things too soon - I expect that a few options have improved considerably since then.<br /><br />One way that this post is different is that I'm going to hit publish very soon, with the post just started not just finished.    So if you're a subscriber and want to see what I end up with, you might like to sign up on Facebook or somewhere, so you get a notification when I've finished.<br /><ul></ul>So let's get started:<br /><br />First stop:  google.com   [google reader replacement]<br />A cool 66-million results.   Yeah, I'll zip through those in no time.<br /><br />Scanning down the list, I don't recognise some of the top placegetters:<br /><br />The first three are from Google News.   No, don't want to check them - I want comparative reviews, no press-releases.<br /><br />A post from "howtogeek" - nah, I don't want to be a geek. <br /><br />One from "workflowing.net" - sounds like a sponsored listing, even though it's not.  But the summary does say "<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16px;">Note: This post is a running list and will continue to be updated with new options and</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16px;"> </span>" - let's take a look.   They have five options:<br />Feedly<br />Feedbin<br />Feed Wrangler<br />Fever<br /><br />Feedly is the only free one.   They're making the usual mutterings about "look what happened to the last free option" - but I remember Picnik:   it wasn't free, but it still got shut down.    So I'm not hung up about free = no control.<br /><br />Not enough to compare yet, need to check another list or two.<br /><br /><h2>6 June update:   </h2><br />Saw this comment on another site.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i> Looked atThe Old Reader - Clicked on the sign-in with Google and see that The Old Reader is requesting permission to: View and manage your Google Contacts - That's a NO<br />Looked at Feedly - Clicked on the Get Feedly for Chrome and it states it can Access your data on all websites and Access your tabs & browsing activity - That's a NO</i></blockquote><br />I'm not so fussed about whether something accesses my tabs and browsing activity - but I don't want a Chrome app:   I need something that works in whatever browser I happen to use, be it IE in the office or Firefox or Chrome at home.<br /><div><br /></div><div><br /><h2>12 June:</h2>I found a reference to Rolio somewhere.    Signed up - even though the screen looked rather bare and pale ( = trendy, but harder to read).   Then I subscribed to one feed, and got an email confirming that I'd subscribed.   Ahh ... no, that's going to get wayyy too painful.<br /><br /><br /><h2>16 June:</h2>I'm starting to get concerned about the number of de-recommendations I'm seeing.   There seem to be lots of reasons not to use tools, and no compelling replacement.<br /><br />So I decided to try The Old Reader. <br /><br />The bit about it wanting to access your Google Contacts may be true - but it's not necessary.    I decided to keep the two services separate, and signed up with a totally new account, no Google Contacts requests involved.<br /><br />It looked a bit odd to start with, but once I realized that it doesn't actually work with IE8, and switched to Chrome, it worked ok.   Personally I think the design is a little ugly - but the basics of Google Reader are there.   <br /><br />Reading their blog, it's still a very young product - three developers, now getting help from the wider community, but still working out a sustainable model for their product.    So it could start charging subscriptions (I'm not keen) or showing ads (doesn't worry me, provided they're not too intrusive) or get bought of by a large player (I'm guessing that won't be Google :-)  ), and I might be searching again.   But it's worth the risk for a while I think.<br /><br /><br /><h2>25 July Update</h2>I was quite happy - until the last few days when TheOldReader has been unavailable due to a hardware upgrade that went wrong.   It's back now, on Friday morning - but it's got me wondering when it might go down next.<br /><br />So I went looking for other web-browser based feed readers - and was disappointed in how few there seem to be.    One option I've tried is the Digg reader.  For this, I had to sign in with my Google account - though discovered upon later logins that it's possible to log in with either Facebook or Twitter, too.  It won't work with IE8, but is ok on Chrome.   It imported my Google Reader subscriptions ok.   The top-level interface is fine - although the list of feeds doesn't show which ones have new items in them.   The display of individual items in feeds is a little ugly, though. <br /><br />So at this stage, I'm not sure which option I'll stick with.<br /><br /></div><div><br /><h2>29 July</h2><br />It looks like the decision is being made for me:   I just logged in to The Old Reader, and say the following banner message at the top of the screen:<br /><br /><span style="background-color: #da3f2d; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 13px;">We have disabled user registration at The Old Reader, and we might be making the website private. If we do, unfortunately your account will not be transferred to the private site, so you might want to export your subscriptions as OPML and start looking for an alternative solution. More details are in available in our blog: </span><a href="http://blog.theoldreader.com/" style="background-color: #da3f2d; color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 13px; outline: 0px;">http://blog.theoldreader.com</a><br /><br />Having read their blog-post:   the plan is to make the site private in two weeks time, unless someone else steps in with a way to make it work.<br /><br />Not a good week for me - a lot on at the day job.   So I won't be moving anywhere quickly ... but am definitely looking for alternative web-delivered, browser-agnostic RSS-reader options.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><h2>Criteria for choosing:</h2><div>The classic approach to choosing software is to determine your requirements, then evaluate options against how well they meet them.    But I've found it hard to distil my requirements.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bottom line - it must let import and let me read the RSS feeds I have now, and let me add new ones.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pretty important:</div><div>Not a stream:  I want to catch up with everything in each feed every so often - not just a stream of what's recent.</div><div>Must read RSS feeds - not tweets or other stuff.</div><div>Nice to have:</div><div>Browser independent</div><div>Used my Google account (maybe)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>

Choosing a replacement for Google Reader

This post tells the story of my choosing a replacement for Google reader. Every so often, I do a post here on Blogger-HAT which is a little ...

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RIP, Google Reader. Google's March 2013 product cancellation summary.

<b>This QuickTip is about Google's March 2013 (spring for them) product retirements, and how they affect Blogger users.</b><br /><br /><a name="more"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoKsnIxPR8hRD3zlIROfwmIyhJ_XvHLK9DF9oaDCcCShNi5phygkHn4wXyz3efThL9uY33dd3cGvd4obYBcaSI8EjN1Munn7Ua9gtS99i0Xlkr7Yp35LP7tvpMdazq9an_VZATg2S2y2yt/s217/quick-tips-blogger-hints-and-tips.png.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /><img alt="quick-tips logo" border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoKsnIxPR8hRD3zlIROfwmIyhJ_XvHLK9DF9oaDCcCShNi5phygkHn4wXyz3efThL9uY33dd3cGvd4obYBcaSI8EjN1Munn7Ua9gtS99i0Xlkr7Yp35LP7tvpMdazq9an_VZATg2S2y2yt/s217/quick-tips-blogger-hints-and-tips.png.png" title="Quick tips for Blogger Users - especially about how Blogger works with other popular tools" width="200" /></a></div><br />For a while, every time the season changes Google have announced a set of product retirements. This quarter's announcement is just out, and you can find it <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br /><br />In short, the changes are:<br /><ul><li>Apps Script will stop supporting <b>GUI Builder and five UiApp widgets</b> from September 16, 2013.</li></ul><ul><li><b>CalDAV API</b> only be available to whitelisted developers, from September 16, 2013. Us Google Calendar's API, instead.</li></ul><ul><li>Google <b>Building Maker</b> will be retired on June 1 2013.</li></ul><ul><li>Google <b>Cloud Connect</b> won't be available from April 30 (use Google Drive's desktop app instead).</li></ul><ul><li><b>Google Reader</b> stops working on July 1, 2013, Export your subscriptions and use another company's RSS feed-reader. (No recommendations given)</li></ul><ul><li>The <b>Google Voice App for Blackberry</b> won't be supported from next week. (Use Google's HTML5 app with Blackberry version 6 and over instead.)</li></ul><ul><li>The <b>Search API for Shopping</b>, is depricated now and will be turned off on September 16, 2013.</li></ul><ul><li><b>Snapseed Desktop (Macintosh and Windows)</b> is no longer available for purchase. Existing customers can still download the software and ask for support. (No alternatives recommended, the Snapseed mobile app on iOS and Android is still available free.)</li></ul><br />As far as I can see, none of these will have a big impact on people as they use Blogger to maintain their blogs.<br /><br />But personally I will miss Google-reader: I use it to keep up with the many blogger-helpers that I read, in order to stay on top of what's happening with Blogger overall and to spot areas that need more investigation.<br /><br />And it worries me that Google are no longer offering a human-useable RSS-feed-reader (ref <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-rss-subscribe-to-posts-is-important.html">What is RSS and why does it matter for bloggers?</a>).   Does it make it more-likely that Google will shut down Feedburner in the future? That would hurt a lot of Blogger-users.<br /><br /><br /><br /><h2>Wanted: a Google-reader replacement</h2><br />Many bloggers, including me, will be looking for a replacement feed-reader. <br /><br />Recommendations welcome, please leave a comment below!<br /><br />

RIP, Google Reader. Google's March 2013 product cancellation summary.

This QuickTip is about Google's March 2013 (spring for them) product retirements, and how they affect Blogger users. For a while, every ...

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A quick way to keep an eye on what is posted to interesting YouTube channels

<b>This quick-tip is about subscribing to a YouTube channel using an RSS feed-reader, like Google Reader</b><br /><br /><a name="more"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoKsnIxPR8hRD3zlIROfwmIyhJ_XvHLK9DF9oaDCcCShNi5phygkHn4wXyz3efThL9uY33dd3cGvd4obYBcaSI8EjN1Munn7Ua9gtS99i0Xlkr7Yp35LP7tvpMdazq9an_VZATg2S2y2yt/s217/quick-tips-blogger-hints-and-tips.png.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /><img alt="quick-tips logo" border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoKsnIxPR8hRD3zlIROfwmIyhJ_XvHLK9DF9oaDCcCShNi5phygkHn4wXyz3efThL9uY33dd3cGvd4obYBcaSI8EjN1Munn7Ua9gtS99i0Xlkr7Yp35LP7tvpMdazq9an_VZATg2S2y2yt/s217/quick-tips-blogger-hints-and-tips.png.png" title="Quick tips for Blogger Users - especially about how Blogger works with other popular tools" width="200" /></a></div>Most <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/04/blogs-blogger-bloggers-posts-pages-and.html">bloggers</a> know about other blogs and websites in their niche that they want to keep an eye on, to either know what's going on, or as inspiration for their own posts.<br /><br />Previously I've explained that <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-rss-subscribe-to-posts-is-important.html">RSS was invented to make this simpler</a>: you can get a summary of changes on all interesting websites in the one place (called a feed-reader), rather than having to regularly visit each site individually.<br /><br />Video is increasingly popular: many bloggers are putting videos in their posts or their posts into videos, and some have even abandoned their blogs and are only publishing new content to a YouTube channel. <br /><br />I've just found that it's very easy to subscribe to a YouTube user or channel in RSS / Google reader, meaning you can see a list of new videos from you reader, without having to go to the channel in YouTube.<br /><br />Follow these steps:<br /><ul><li><b>Find</b> the channel or person you want to subscribe to in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a></li></ul><ul><li><b>Right-click</b> on their name or icon, and <b>copy the URL</b> / web-address / link location (the precise name depends on the browser you are using - you want the place that clicking the link takes you to, not the location of the image-file used to make the link)</li></ul><ul><li>Go into your feed-reader, and subscribe to that link (in Google Reader, this is done using a red button near top left corner of the screen labelled "subscribe" - just click it, paste in the link and click the Add button).</li></ul><br />The link will be something like   <br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">http://www.youtube.com/user/MariahIsTheQueen  or http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX9_dIohJBxlizx14AozTng</blockquote>If it has something else after the name (eg   ?feature=watch), then <b>delete that part before you subscribe</b>  you just need a link saying whether it points to a user or channel, and the name of that user channel.<br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpD1R0YSY-a8yDv9Y2YwALPABMXV4ilX1MTEdW8vUlFvUuPStQQEwV0rGd8d866sP1qsHCPtXWmjTkh6kJRvalDJ5Ej7EekPMhOzOrg_NhxZdwXGgnDfwlRqmrnKZnm93a5httmdGvaHOF/s567/youtube-get-updates-in-rss-reader-channel-or-account.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpD1R0YSY-a8yDv9Y2YwALPABMXV4ilX1MTEdW8vUlFvUuPStQQEwV0rGd8d866sP1qsHCPtXWmjTkh6kJRvalDJ5Ej7EekPMhOzOrg_NhxZdwXGgnDfwlRqmrnKZnm93a5httmdGvaHOF/s640/youtube-get-updates-in-rss-reader-channel-or-account.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Example of subscribing to a channel about rocket-science in YouTube</b></td></tr></tbody></table>

A quick way to keep an eye on what is posted to interesting YouTube channels

This quick-tip is about subscribing to a YouTube channel using an RSS feed-reader, like Google Reader Most bloggers  know about other blogs ...

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