Month: March 2013

Google Reader alternatives: Comparing Newsblur & Feedly

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A couple of weeks have passed since Google dropped a bombshell and announced that Google Reader is to be retired. Since then, I’ve been partly hoping for Google to change its mind – which doesn’t seem to be on the cards – and looking into alternatives. The key features that I’ve been looking for in a Google Reader replacement have been:

  1. A web-based interface
  2. An iOS app
  3. Synchronisation of read/unread items between all clients

The two alternatives that I’ve ended up paying the most attention to have been Newsblur and Feedly, and so I’m going to quickly review them both based on a couple of weeks’ usage.

A screenshot of the Newsblur interface

Newsblur

In the immediate aftermath of Google’s announcement, Newsblur took a massive hammering – it was often unreachable or kept throwing errors. It’s settled down now so that it’s usable, so I’ve had a chance to use it properly.

Newsblur certainly has a lot of features, especially for misbehaving sites where the RSS feeds no longer work. And I’m sure it’ll be awesome for power users. But, for people like me… not so much. The interface is quite cluttered and I can’t see myself using many of the extra features. I’ve also tried the ‘preview’ of the next version, available to paying customers (I paid $12 for a year’s premium membership) but it’s not much better.

There is an iOS app which does the basics, but it doesn’t really work offline. This is a problem for me as I often read my feeds on trains, and don’t always have a mobile signal – damn those Victorian engineers and their tunnels.

So, on the whole, I’m not so keen on Newsblur.

A screenshot of the Feedly interface

Feedly

Feedly is somewhat better, in my opinion. It’s got quite a clean interface, although it defaults to a magazine-style view for each category initially. At first I really didn’t like the web interface, which actually works through a browser extension in Firefox, Chrome and Safari (sorry Internet Explorer and Opera users). You can customise the colours and the way articles are displayed, though.

Today, however, Feedly updated the extensions and it’s now a much more pleasant experience. It still uses Google Reader as a back-end, for now, which means that all of your subscriptions and unread items are synchronised. When Google Reader is switched off, Feedly will switch to its own system, but in the meantime this means the transition is quite easy.

The iOS app is reasonable. It’s attractive, although I imagine it’ll be better on an iPad than my iPhone. Items do seem to be cached for offline reading which is nice, but I did find it a bit slow compared to Reeder, which is what I currently use for Google Reader.

The Old Reader

As a bonus I’ll mention The Old Reader, which is another popular Google Reader alternative, however there’s no mobile apps at present which rules it out.

Other Google Reader Alternatives

I’ve only mentioned three here but there are others – Lifehacker and Mashable have good lists. I’ll probably stick with Feedly although I am hoping that Reeder will work with Feedly in future. Future versions of Reeder will also support Feedbin (a $2/month service) and Reeder’s author is apparently open to other services.

You can also read what my friend Les says on his search for alternatives, although he’s less happy with Feedly than I am.

Things are a little quiet around here

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The Stray

Apart from last week’s eulogy to Google Reader, it’s been the best part of a month since I’ve last posted on here. This is not due to a lack of things happening but more because I’ve been very busy, and/or too tired. Today is actually the first day that I haven’t been at work since Sunday 10th March, having worked both days last weekend. As it happens, I’ve picked quite a good day to take annual leave as there’s quite heavy snow outside. As well as having a well-deserved lie-in, I’m trying to tackle all of the unread items in Google Reader (which I’m kind-of still using) and Pocket that I’ve amassed over the past three weeks or so. Christine is working this weekend so I basically have three days in which to do basically nothing, which for once I’m looking forward to.

Things are progressing with the wedding, which is about six weeks away; we have all of the RSVPs now, and have organised a few of the major outstanding things like the mens’ suits and flowers. And we’ve booked a honeymoon – five nights in Paris. It’s only a short break but we may go on a more substantial holiday next year. What with the wedding, we didn’t want two really large purchases this year.

Having missed it when it was on TV, I’ve bought the DVD of the first two series of The IT Crowd (also on iTunes) which we’re both enjoying immensely. I may have to buy the other two series as well.

Two more of my user accounts have two-factor authentication – app.net and Apple ID. I’m now waiting for Twitter to catch up and enable it on their site.

Trinity Leeds opened yesterday (see my blog post about it). I didn’t go, despite the possibility of a free t-shirt at the new Apple Store there. Yes, at last, Leeds has an official Apple Store there; I’ve been waiting for at least 7 years for one, after Manchester and Sheffield got theirs.

The demise of Google Reader

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A screenshot of Google Reader with a shutdown message.

Just before I went to bed last night Google announced it was shutting down Google Reader. To me, this news is devastating – I use Google Reader every day to keep up with feeds from blogs and other web sites, and have done almost since 2006, back when it was still a Google Labs product. Others are equally shocked too.

Whilst I’m still saddened by the news, it’s not to be unexpected I suppose. Little has happened to Google Reader over the past few years; the last major redesign was in October 2011 which controversially removed some features in favour of Google+ sharing. Before then, it had been some time since the product had received any attention. Clearly it’s not been a priority for Google for a number of years.

The closure of Google Reader is part of yet another round of ‘spring cleaning’, where Google shuts down under-used services and features. It’s had a few of these now, but this is the first time it’s really affected me (well, apart from ending Exchange support for Gmail, but at least there were alternatives).

Predictably there are already a number of articles about alternatives, from Lifehacker, Mashable and CNet. Both recommend Feedly so I’ll check that out, especially as it appears to have an easy migration path. I’m primarily looking for a web-based reader which will sync with an iOS app, like Google Reader does now. Interestingly CNet also recommends Google Currents, which I’ve heard some good things about. However, Google Currents is not a very well known service and Google’s announcement that Google Reader was shutting down didn’t mention it, so I’m not sure how long that will be around for either.

TechCrunch reckons that FeedBurner will be the next service that Google kills off, as that too has languished for a long time. And iGoogle, which is Google’s customised start page site, will close soon as well having previously been announced for the chop.

The outcry from this announcement has been pretty big and so it’s possible that Google will re-consider – a petition has already amassed 40,000 signatures in less than a day. However, I doubt it will – Google Reader hasn’t been a priority for some years now. There’s three and a half months to go before the doors finally shut so I’ll use the time to look at the alternatives. Google Reader has, thankfully, always had an export feature and this now works as part of Google Takeout . This allows you to carry over your subscriptions to somewhere else in OPML format, plus all of your shares and notes from before the October 2011 redesign.