I have been keeping up with my Feed Reading lately and posting the best stuff to my link blog. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t reading as many feeds lately because it just wasn’t fun.
It’s interesting. For the past few years I’ve used NewsGator inside of Outlook. I fought with Dave Winer about news aggregators for all of that time. He said that a “river” style of news aggregator is a lot nicer than a three-pane folder aggregator, like what NewsGator has.
Now, yeah, NewsGator has a river view too, but I never found it satisfying. I’m not sure why Google’s Reader caught my eye, but now that it has it’s just so much easier to read thousands of posts and sift through them looking for good stuff.
I don’t read separate feeds anymore. I just read everything in one long continuous scrolling Window. By the way, it’s a LOT faster on Firefox 2 than in IE 7.
Partly it’s the cross-platform thing. By using Google Reader I don’t need to worry about getting my feeds loaded into the various computers I use. In fact, I can just sit down at your computer and start reading feeds (something I’ve actually done a lot more often than I’d like to admit).
My readers have been suggesting I go back and give Bloglines and Newsgator online (among others) another chance. Over the past week I have and I just don’t like those as much as I like the Google Reader.
What about you? Have you tried Google Reader? Why do you stick with the aggregator you’re on, if you haven’t switched? Why did you switch to Google Reader if you have?
ASIDE: our PPT slides from our Blog Business Summit presentation are now up, if you wanna download them and take a look.
Scobleizer 
There’s a really annoying Google Reader bug where you can’t delete a feed.
One prob I have with the “river of news” style is that I really need to be able to make some feeds as “more relevant” than others.
There’s stuff you browse, and stuff you devour.
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There’s a really annoying Google Reader bug where you can’t delete a feed.
One prob I have with the “river of news” style is that I really need to be able to make some feeds as “more relevant” than others.
There’s stuff you browse, and stuff you devour.
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engtech. I agree there. But why couldn’t you open up two Google Reader accounts? One for “important feeds” and one for “less important feeds?”
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engtech. I agree there. But why couldn’t you open up two Google Reader accounts? One for “important feeds” and one for “less important feeds?”
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I use Newsfire RSS for the Mac (http://www.newsfirerss.com/) exclusively these days, though I’ve seen Google Reader’s latest incarnation and find it compelling, but Newsfire RSS lets me read my feeds offline — not a must but really a must-have. There are only two features I’d really like to see in Newsfire RSS, but I’m not sure if they’re best suited for a desktop RSS app.
Newsfire is 2-pane, with a feed listing on the left and the feed view on the right. I have my feeds organized in groups which I have to refine as my interests change, but currently they’re something like this:
1. Basecamp Projects: RSS feeds related to Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com) projects.
2. Blogs (1st Tier): close friends and read with minimum latency.
3. Blogs (2nd Tier): bloggers I like to read when I have time to do so (they tend to write longer entries).
4. Blogs and News (3rd Tier)
5. Design
6. Architecture
7. Personal Content: feeds for my own content
8. Podcasts
9. vlogs
10. RubyOnRails
11. Social bookmarks (del.icio.us feeds of people I follow closely mostly)
12. Social Photos (Flickr photos of people I follow closely)
Now I usually read these in Newsfire’s river-of-news way, which consists of pressing the spacebar to cycle between feeds. I usually have it set to “oldest to newest” river-of-news order for every new “set” of downloaded entries (i.e., every time I refresh and get new entries, i read oldest-to-newest for that newly refreshed set).
However, I can skip a particular feed in the river with a simple key combo (cmd + ctrl + down).
The two missing features I miss:
1. Ability to star particular entries and publish a feed of starred entries, possibly pushing starred items to del.icio.us (currently I click through to the entry and hit the ‘del.icio.us’ button in firefox to bookmark).
2. Ability to sync read state with an online server that I can then connect to from my mobile with a simple mobile RSS reader I can mark items read with.
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I use Newsfire RSS for the Mac (http://www.newsfirerss.com/) exclusively these days, though I’ve seen Google Reader’s latest incarnation and find it compelling, but Newsfire RSS lets me read my feeds offline — not a must but really a must-have. There are only two features I’d really like to see in Newsfire RSS, but I’m not sure if they’re best suited for a desktop RSS app.
Newsfire is 2-pane, with a feed listing on the left and the feed view on the right. I have my feeds organized in groups which I have to refine as my interests change, but currently they’re something like this:
1. Basecamp Projects: RSS feeds related to Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com) projects.
2. Blogs (1st Tier): close friends and read with minimum latency.
3. Blogs (2nd Tier): bloggers I like to read when I have time to do so (they tend to write longer entries).
4. Blogs and News (3rd Tier)
5. Design
6. Architecture
7. Personal Content: feeds for my own content
8. Podcasts
9. vlogs
10. RubyOnRails
11. Social bookmarks (del.icio.us feeds of people I follow closely mostly)
12. Social Photos (Flickr photos of people I follow closely)
Now I usually read these in Newsfire’s river-of-news way, which consists of pressing the spacebar to cycle between feeds. I usually have it set to “oldest to newest” river-of-news order for every new “set” of downloaded entries (i.e., every time I refresh and get new entries, i read oldest-to-newest for that newly refreshed set).
However, I can skip a particular feed in the river with a simple key combo (cmd + ctrl + down).
The two missing features I miss:
1. Ability to star particular entries and publish a feed of starred entries, possibly pushing starred items to del.icio.us (currently I click through to the entry and hit the ‘del.icio.us’ button in firefox to bookmark).
2. Ability to sync read state with an online server that I can then connect to from my mobile with a simple mobile RSS reader I can mark items read with.
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I’m staying with Safari. I use it constantly anyway, so i don’t have to switch what I’m doing. I don’t have to have it running to update. I can view feeds and other web sites in exactly the same way. It’s convenient, and works the way I want it to, instead of making me figure out what it’s doing.
Adding a feed is precisely the same action as adding any other bookmark.
Basically, it makes reading feeds a transparent process.
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I’m staying with Safari. I use it constantly anyway, so i don’t have to switch what I’m doing. I don’t have to have it running to update. I can view feeds and other web sites in exactly the same way. It’s convenient, and works the way I want it to, instead of making me figure out what it’s doing.
Adding a feed is precisely the same action as adding any other bookmark.
Basically, it makes reading feeds a transparent process.
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I love Google Reader. I wish they had more than 10 posts at a time for their mobile version.
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I love Google Reader. I wish they had more than 10 posts at a time for their mobile version.
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The Google Reader is so good that it has diminished my appetite to try out other feed readers as I usually like to try out competitive software. I’m a fan.
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The Google Reader is so good that it has diminished my appetite to try out other feed readers as I usually like to try out competitive software. I’m a fan.
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I’ve tried the majority of them, and I am going to have to go with G-Reader. The ability to “river read” is fantastic.
One thing I have not been able to do yet is figure out how to “BlueDot” an article I want to share while plowing through a few hundred feeds.
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I’ve tried the majority of them, and I am going to have to go with G-Reader. The ability to “river read” is fantastic.
One thing I have not been able to do yet is figure out how to “BlueDot” an article I want to share while plowing through a few hundred feeds.
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Google Reader rocks. I’ve used 2-3 aggregators now and Google Reader just blows them away. Part of the appeal is being able to use them anywhere via the browser. With FF2, the RSS subscriptions get plugged right into Google reader. Very cool. Add Google Browser Synch to FF and you’ve got a go anywhere reader.
Do you use a personalized Google homepage? If so, do you use the Google reader add-in. Thats also very nice and works quite a bit better in FF2 than in IE7.
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Google Reader rocks. I’ve used 2-3 aggregators now and Google Reader just blows them away. Part of the appeal is being able to use them anywhere via the browser. With FF2, the RSS subscriptions get plugged right into Google reader. Very cool. Add Google Browser Synch to FF and you’ve got a go anywhere reader.
Do you use a personalized Google homepage? If so, do you use the Google reader add-in. Thats also very nice and works quite a bit better in FF2 than in IE7.
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First time I checked out Google reader, I wasn’t excited, but I’ve been using them for the past month since they did the river of news thing, and I’m pretty happy with the basic experience.
I hope they’ll go above and beyond the other readers out there, but that’s a blog post I need to get to this week.
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First time I checked out Google reader, I wasn’t excited, but I’ve been using them for the past month since they did the river of news thing, and I’m pretty happy with the basic experience.
I hope they’ll go above and beyond the other readers out there, but that’s a blog post I need to get to this week.
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I had used Google Reader a while back and wasn’t real impressed with it. I used Safari and Vienna on the Mac for a long time. After reading some of your recent posts about Google Reader I decided to give it another shot, and I love it.
The interface has been vastly improved, and its’ “river” style is very appealing to me. The only thing I miss is being able to read my feeds offline as easily as I can online.
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Have you tried using Newsgator’s FeedDemon app? You can get all the feeds in a river newspaper type look.
The reason I use FeedDemon, is because it allows me to sync my feeds with other computers. During the course of a day, I could be looking at 3 different computer screens and with them all sync, I don’t have to read a news item twice. I also use it so that when I’m out of the office, I can read the feeds on my cell/pda and not see duplicate items.
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Have you tried using Newsgator’s FeedDemon app? You can get all the feeds in a river newspaper type look.
The reason I use FeedDemon, is because it allows me to sync my feeds with other computers. During the course of a day, I could be looking at 3 different computer screens and with them all sync, I don’t have to read a news item twice. I also use it so that when I’m out of the office, I can read the feeds on my cell/pda and not see duplicate items.
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I had used Google Reader a while back and wasn’t real impressed with it. I used Safari and Vienna on the Mac for a long time. After reading some of your recent posts about Google Reader I decided to give it another shot, and I love it.
The interface has been vastly improved, and its’ “river” style is very appealing to me. The only thing I miss is being able to read my feeds offline as easily as I can online.
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I have changed to Google Reader from Sharp reader because I also use a number of different computers don’t have to keep them in sync. I have also created folders to ‘filter’ the blog feeds automatically which works very well. When I don’t have much time, I can go straight to ‘important’ feeds.
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I have changed to Google Reader from Sharp reader because I also use a number of different computers don’t have to keep them in sync. I have also created folders to ‘filter’ the blog feeds automatically which works very well. When I don’t have much time, I can go straight to ‘important’ feeds.
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try bloglines mobile on your usual bigscreen pcmac
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try bloglines mobile on your usual bigscreen pcmac
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I may have to try Google Reader again. I tried it the first week it came out and it was just too dang slow compared to Bloglines which was faster and felt more polished.
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I may have to try Google Reader again. I tried it the first week it came out and it was just too dang slow compared to Bloglines which was faster and felt more polished.
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The only place Google Reader doesn’t work well is on a five-year-old computer. You need processing power and bandwidth to render Google Reader fast enough to swim in the feeds.
I get the River of News experience when I scroll through “Robert Scoble’s Shared Feeds” and I also get exceptional satisfaction reducing my unread items to below 100 by simple clicking and marking all those shared items as read.
After reading the comments here, I need to figure out how to filter my feeds. I didn’t realise you could do that.
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The only place Google Reader doesn’t work well is on a five-year-old computer. You need processing power and bandwidth to render Google Reader fast enough to swim in the feeds.
I get the River of News experience when I scroll through “Robert Scoble’s Shared Feeds” and I also get exceptional satisfaction reducing my unread items to below 100 by simple clicking and marking all those shared items as read.
After reading the comments here, I need to figure out how to filter my feeds. I didn’t realise you could do that.
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I use Google Reader too, actually this is the very first RSS reader I like, I’ve tried numerous ones before. The mobile version sucks and it has a nasty bug (I have to log in every time I visit and don’t use the “Remember me” function, or it gives me nice errors the second time), but nevertheless, it is awesome, and much more convenient than reading 50+ news pages and blogs.
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hmm.. tried the Google Reader.. but I think I’ll stick with Firefox’s Sage RSS reader. few reasons:
1. With Sage, I get a better eyeful of the variety of posts and helpful clips before I need to scroll. (the one liner view in Reader is too brief)
2. I hate when an RSS reader pops up a new browser window upon clicking on a feed story link. Sage in the left bar frame is perfect.
3. Feel strange about having a big company know the feeds I’m subscribed to.
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hmm.. tried the Google Reader.. but I think I’ll stick with Firefox’s Sage RSS reader. few reasons:
1. With Sage, I get a better eyeful of the variety of posts and helpful clips before I need to scroll. (the one liner view in Reader is too brief)
2. I hate when an RSS reader pops up a new browser window upon clicking on a feed story link. Sage in the left bar frame is perfect.
3. Feel strange about having a big company know the feeds I’m subscribed to.
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I use Google Reader too, actually this is the very first RSS reader I like, I’ve tried numerous ones before. The mobile version sucks and it has a nasty bug (I have to log in every time I visit and don’t use the “Remember me” function, or it gives me nice errors the second time), but nevertheless, it is awesome, and much more convenient than reading 50+ news pages and blogs.
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Google Reader is good. I love the sharing feature. But my main reader is still NewsFire.
1. speed. Much more responsive than Google.
2. locally cached for offline reading. Very helpful in traveling
3. flexibility. I can view a river, sort by feed, or evengroup feeds into folders. (Folders give me a tech river and a political river); instant switch between views.
4. standing search queries. If there’s a topic I’m interested, I can set a standing query on it. Newsfire calls this a search feed. It gives me RSS goodness even if the source doesn’t have RSS. I can point a search feed to any combo of web, news, or blog search engines and get new results.
5. smart feeds. Work like smart playlists in iTunes
6. good keyboard shortcuts
7. videos will play in the reader
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Google Reader is good. I love the sharing feature. But my main reader is still NewsFire.
1. speed. Much more responsive than Google.
2. locally cached for offline reading. Very helpful in traveling
3. flexibility. I can view a river, sort by feed, or evengroup feeds into folders. (Folders give me a tech river and a political river); instant switch between views.
4. standing search queries. If there’s a topic I’m interested, I can set a standing query on it. Newsfire calls this a search feed. It gives me RSS goodness even if the source doesn’t have RSS. I can point a search feed to any combo of web, news, or blog search engines and get new results.
5. smart feeds. Work like smart playlists in iTunes
6. good keyboard shortcuts
7. videos will play in the reader
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Allen: I see the entire post in Reader, not just one line. I think you can change that view. Well, Google already knows everything else about what I do online. Heheh.
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Allen: I see the entire post in Reader, not just one line. I think you can change that view. Well, Google already knows everything else about what I do online. Heheh.
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I’m also a convert from NewsGator to Google Reader. I switched to using NewsGator Online for a while but now I use Google exlusively. The Firefox “subscribe in” function works great for adding feeds and jumping through posts with the auto-marking as read works great.
While I understand the value of offline reading I think the value of reading anywhere outweighs it.
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I’m also a convert from NewsGator to Google Reader. I switched to using NewsGator Online for a while but now I use Google exlusively. The Firefox “subscribe in” function works great for adding feeds and jumping through posts with the auto-marking as read works great.
While I understand the value of offline reading I think the value of reading anywhere outweighs it.
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I like Google Reader a lot. I’d like 2 things; first to have the river ordered in a variety of ways – oldest to newest, newest to oldest, feed list order; and second to be able to order the feed list just like you can do in Bloglines.
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I like Google Reader a lot. I’d like 2 things; first to have the river ordered in a variety of ways – oldest to newest, newest to oldest, feed list order; and second to be able to order the feed list just like you can do in Bloglines.
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I’ve moved exclusively to Google Reader after previously using NetNewsWire/NewsGator Online. Thats the biggest compliment I can give it.
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I’ve moved exclusively to Google Reader after previously using NetNewsWire/NewsGator Online. Thats the biggest compliment I can give it.
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Using Google Reader a lot and love it – very slick and love the starring facility. Also using NewsFire RSS is I have more time and want a more visually appealing UI.
Overall, very impressed with G reader and have recommended it to the few colleagues who know what RSS is!!!! đŸ˜‰
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Using Google Reader a lot and love it – very slick and love the starring facility. Also using NewsFire RSS is I have more time and want a more visually appealing UI.
Overall, very impressed with G reader and have recommended it to the few colleagues who know what RSS is!!!! đŸ˜‰
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I am using Bloglines for the past year and half and am pretty satisifed with it. It has all the keyboard shortcuts that Google Reader has (and for a longer time too :)). What it lacks is a link blog feature.
But until Google Reader offers a killer feature which makes me switch, I’m sticking with Bloglines.
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I am using Bloglines for the past year and half and am pretty satisifed with it. It has all the keyboard shortcuts that Google Reader has (and for a longer time too :)). What it lacks is a link blog feature.
But until Google Reader offers a killer feature which makes me switch, I’m sticking with Bloglines.
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engtech (#1)
You can make some feeds more relevant in Google Reader — just assign them to a category. Then you can get a river of news for a particular category.
For me, I set Reader to hide everything that’s not new. Then I read my “important” category list first. When I’m done with that I mark all as read, then go to “All Items” and scan through the rest. Works like a champ!
If I have more time I can head straight to “All Items” and be sure that I’m getting everything.
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engtech (#1)
You can make some feeds more relevant in Google Reader — just assign them to a category. Then you can get a river of news for a particular category.
For me, I set Reader to hide everything that’s not new. Then I read my “important” category list first. When I’m done with that I mark all as read, then go to “All Items” and scan through the rest. Works like a champ!
If I have more time I can head straight to “All Items” and be sure that I’m getting everything.
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full agreement, I switched from bloglines to google reader as soon as the latter received it’s verymuch needed update. once I got used to the river-of-news view, there’s no turning back!
I only wish I could customize the river for access in my mobile, since some feeds just don’t make sense reading on the phone (f.e. image-rich feeds, or feeds mostly linking outside like the digg-feeds)
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full agreement, I switched from bloglines to google reader as soon as the latter received it’s verymuch needed update. once I got used to the river-of-news view, there’s no turning back!
I only wish I could customize the river for access in my mobile, since some feeds just don’t make sense reading on the phone (f.e. image-rich feeds, or feeds mostly linking outside like the digg-feeds)
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Personally, i use RSS Bandit. It has a sort of river style news reading feature, and it is a desktop application. (i still prefer to user desktop apps for heavy use, dunno for what reason though… it just feels better)
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Personally, i use RSS Bandit. It has a sort of river style news reading feature, and it is a desktop application. (i still prefer to user desktop apps for heavy use, dunno for what reason though… it just feels better)
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Finally you moved to a “real” rss reader. I never did understand that you prefered NewsGator that put the feed into your Outlook. First of all Outlook is not a very nice program, so why would you force your self to read your feeds there. Second, I mean its not like you’re not getting enough e-mail already without getting your feed in your mail program.
Anyway, I’m using Bloglines and I have been long before Google found out about rss readers and made their own. I have tried Google Reader but I just don’t see that it gives me anything that bloglines doesn’t give me. So I’ll stick with Bloglines for now.
There is one thing about Bloglines that could make me switch. Resently they appeared to have more downtime for rep that they used to have. If that goes on I might switch.
But that might be the same with Google Reader I don’t know. At least it is likely that I will experience downtime more because I’m in Europe and the american tech guys do their reps (wisely) when its night in the US as to not disturb their customers to much. Only problem is that when its night in the US it is daytime in Europe and I get the downtime.
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Finally you moved to a “real” rss reader. I never did understand that you prefered NewsGator that put the feed into your Outlook. First of all Outlook is not a very nice program, so why would you force your self to read your feeds there. Second, I mean its not like you’re not getting enough e-mail already without getting your feed in your mail program.
Anyway, I’m using Bloglines and I have been long before Google found out about rss readers and made their own. I have tried Google Reader but I just don’t see that it gives me anything that bloglines doesn’t give me. So I’ll stick with Bloglines for now.
There is one thing about Bloglines that could make me switch. Resently they appeared to have more downtime for rep that they used to have. If that goes on I might switch.
But that might be the same with Google Reader I don’t know. At least it is likely that I will experience downtime more because I’m in Europe and the american tech guys do their reps (wisely) when its night in the US as to not disturb their customers to much. Only problem is that when its night in the US it is daytime in Europe and I get the downtime.
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I use Bloglines. It’s platform independent. Mobile version works well. What I read is available for everybody to peruse via the following;
http://www.bloglines.com/public/cisnky
I’ve tried Google reader and I like the open page summary of blogs that have been updated. I use Google mail and the whole idea of checking blogs and email from the same place appeals to me. Biggest gripe so far is that I cannot adjust the width of the left pain, so some of the subscription titles are cut off. (I do know about the rollovers)
I’m going to stick with Bloglines for now. I’m sure over time Google reader will improve and I may switch.
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I use Bloglines. It’s platform independent. Mobile version works well. What I read is available for everybody to peruse via the following;
http://www.bloglines.com/public/cisnky
I’ve tried Google reader and I like the open page summary of blogs that have been updated. I use Google mail and the whole idea of checking blogs and email from the same place appeals to me. Biggest gripe so far is that I cannot adjust the width of the left pain, so some of the subscription titles are cut off. (I do know about the rollovers)
I’m going to stick with Bloglines for now. I’m sure over time Google reader will improve and I may switch.
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There’s a lot of love out there for the new Google Reader. This could really hurt the current RSS reader clients out there. The one’s that cost more than free.
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There’s a lot of love out there for the new Google Reader. This could really hurt the current RSS reader clients out there. The one’s that cost more than free.
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G-Reader is very flexible. You can read as a river only what you want, and still read your favs as single feeds.
The sadly disappeared “SearchFox” was even able to sort the posts so you would be reading first the posts that were more likely to be interesting to you in case you didn’t have time to read them all. That was REALLY useful: a river sorted by relevance.
Do you know if anybody is developing that technology?
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G-Reader is very flexible. You can read as a river only what you want, and still read your favs as single feeds.
The sadly disappeared “SearchFox” was even able to sort the posts so you would be reading first the posts that were more likely to be interesting to you in case you didn’t have time to read them all. That was REALLY useful: a river sorted by relevance.
Do you know if anybody is developing that technology?
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Dave, you were right, you were right about river-of-news. Tell your sister you were right.
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Dave, you were right, you were right about river-of-news. Tell your sister you were right.
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My blog reading is contextual and I’d need three rivers, at least. In the morning as I drink my coffee I catch up on news and political blogs. While I’m at work I focus on work-related technology blogs. Throughout the day, to relieve stress or fill an odd five minute gap, I might dip into random entertainment blogs, like Boing Boing.
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My blog reading is contextual and I’d need three rivers, at least. In the morning as I drink my coffee I catch up on news and political blogs. While I’m at work I focus on work-related technology blogs. Throughout the day, to relieve stress or fill an odd five minute gap, I might dip into random entertainment blogs, like Boing Boing.
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I do use Google reader. Fast, and works from home and work with no effort. Tried bloglines, but found it to awkward and the UI’s distracting. I guess simplicity rules.
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I do use Google reader. Fast, and works from home and work with no effort. Tried bloglines, but found it to awkward and the UI’s distracting. I guess simplicity rules.
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I flipped to google reader from live bookmarks in Firefox, I love it for reading feeds, but managing feeds is a real pain, adding a feed is not as easy as Firefox live bookmark & managing the tags is no better ( what is the difference between a tag & a label ?? ).
What I want is the power of folders & sub folders as part of the google reader, and a really easy way to move them around, drag and drop on the left would be the go ( I’d happily drop sub folders if the trade off was drag & drop mgmt ).
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I flipped to google reader from live bookmarks in Firefox, I love it for reading feeds, but managing feeds is a real pain, adding a feed is not as easy as Firefox live bookmark & managing the tags is no better ( what is the difference between a tag & a label ?? ).
What I want is the power of folders & sub folders as part of the google reader, and a really easy way to move them around, drag and drop on the left would be the go ( I’d happily drop sub folders if the trade off was drag & drop mgmt ).
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I Was using RSS Bandit before I switched to Flock, then I fell in all sorts of love with the built-in flock aggregator.
Then I read your last post on google reader, and decided to give it another shot. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t have to switch permanently.
Google, aside from the easy J, J, J, J, K, S, J, J reading, starring, and sharing, makes it that much easier for me not to have to re-read and sift through feeds at home that I almost definitely got to during the day at work while I was slacking off.
I mean, I guarantee most of you read alot more feeds than I do (I am around 50ish… if I let it go a whole day I end up with like 130 posts), but it is still more than I Want to read twice in a day, once at work and once at home.
Hooray google (again!)
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I Was using RSS Bandit before I switched to Flock, then I fell in all sorts of love with the built-in flock aggregator.
Then I read your last post on google reader, and decided to give it another shot. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t have to switch permanently.
Google, aside from the easy J, J, J, J, K, S, J, J reading, starring, and sharing, makes it that much easier for me not to have to re-read and sift through feeds at home that I almost definitely got to during the day at work while I was slacking off.
I mean, I guarantee most of you read alot more feeds than I do (I am around 50ish… if I let it go a whole day I end up with like 130 posts), but it is still more than I Want to read twice in a day, once at work and once at home.
Hooray google (again!)
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I originally didn’t like Google reader…
then when the new version of google reader came out i thought its performance was amazing..
that said ive switched to the earlier view of google reader.
I also agree FF2(Windows) rocks. FF2(Mac) sucks!
I like the fact that my feeds are in one place whichever machine/mobile/location that im at.
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I originally didn’t like Google reader…
then when the new version of google reader came out i thought its performance was amazing..
that said ive switched to the earlier view of google reader.
I also agree FF2(Windows) rocks. FF2(Mac) sucks!
I like the fact that my feeds are in one place whichever machine/mobile/location that im at.
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I just switched to google reader and love it. I was a long time NewsGator Online user. And, I actually just switched to the river. In the past I had to follow RSS feeds for work, so it was imperative that I knew what folder I was reading just for quicker reference, note taking, etc. But, now that I just read RSS feeds for “fun” the river is a much better way to go.
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I just switched to google reader and love it. I was a long time NewsGator Online user. And, I actually just switched to the river. In the past I had to follow RSS feeds for work, so it was imperative that I knew what folder I was reading just for quicker reference, note taking, etc. But, now that I just read RSS feeds for “fun” the river is a much better way to go.
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I was a Newshutch user, but I tried out Google Reader, and now I’m totes switched over.
I like it because I can basically mimic the behavior of Newshutch, or customize it more, if need be. Newshutch, as nice as the interface is, doesn’t allow for much UI flexibility.
Plus, I love all the feeds in Reader.
Oh, and I don’t use all this shortcut key nonsense. I just open thing in expanded view and scroll down with the middle button, marking things as read automatically as I scroll.
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I was a Newshutch user, but I tried out Google Reader, and now I’m totes switched over.
I like it because I can basically mimic the behavior of Newshutch, or customize it more, if need be. Newshutch, as nice as the interface is, doesn’t allow for much UI flexibility.
Plus, I love all the feeds in Reader.
Oh, and I don’t use all this shortcut key nonsense. I just open thing in expanded view and scroll down with the middle button, marking things as read automatically as I scroll.
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Newsfire RSS vs Google Reader. No contest. Google Reader could not handle my 1500 feeds. Newsfire no problem.
Google Reader I tried to delete down to about 500 sites but when I got done all of my feeds has disappeared!! No way am I going back.
Newsfire RSS all the way! For all of the reasons given by all the Newsfire users above.
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Newsfire RSS vs Google Reader. No contest. Google Reader could not handle my 1500 feeds. Newsfire no problem.
Google Reader I tried to delete down to about 500 sites but when I got done all of my feeds has disappeared!! No way am I going back.
Newsfire RSS all the way! For all of the reasons given by all the Newsfire users above.
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I like the new Google Reader as well. It works much better for me than Bloglines or Newsgator Online do. The star feature is one of the big selling points for me. It lets me scan feeds and quickly mark those ones which I want to go back and read later on when I’m not doing what it is that I’m *supposed* to be doing. đŸ˜‰
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I like the new Google Reader as well. It works much better for me than Bloglines or Newsgator Online do. The star feature is one of the big selling points for me. It lets me scan feeds and quickly mark those ones which I want to go back and read later on when I’m not doing what it is that I’m *supposed* to be doing. đŸ˜‰
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OK, I was convinced to try it out….but where’s the *search* function…I use that often in Bloglines to drudge up a past post…am I missing it in Google? It’s got to be there, right?
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OK, I was convinced to try it out….but where’s the *search* function…I use that often in Bloglines to drudge up a past post…am I missing it in Google? It’s got to be there, right?
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I don’t think you’ll have any regrets about switching to the river style. My RSS stress level went way down when I stopped treating feeds like mailboxes. I was on RSSOwl, and then switched to myEarthLink Reader and am really happy with the dirt-simpleness of the interface (full comment-y disclosure: I write Earthling, EarthLink’s blog). I’ve become less obsessive about making sure I read everything, and thus better able to attend to the things that really are interesting to me.
One of the real tests of a reader is how you feel when you return to it after a couple of days off. How have you found G Reader in that respect?
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I don’t think you’ll have any regrets about switching to the river style. My RSS stress level went way down when I stopped treating feeds like mailboxes. I was on RSSOwl, and then switched to myEarthLink Reader and am really happy with the dirt-simpleness of the interface (full comment-y disclosure: I write Earthling, EarthLink’s blog). I’ve become less obsessive about making sure I read everything, and thus better able to attend to the things that really are interesting to me.
One of the real tests of a reader is how you feel when you return to it after a couple of days off. How have you found G Reader in that respect?
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Yeah, I switched as well, and the only thing that would improve the package for me is if the mobile reader had an expanded mode.
There’s two things to worry about in mobiles and that’s storage and network. The current Google Reader Mobile is great for common cell phones that have low storage or memory on their embedded browsers but going back and forth between posts is a pain when the latency is as bad as it can be with some providers.
I’m on a Sidekick which has a great mobile browser and EDGE speeds, but not only do I need to deal with cell latency, I also have to face the Sidekick web service as well, which scales down/proxies pages and is sometimes an extra layer of “slowness.”
If there was an option where I could get a river of 20 items a page, all exposed at once, it would be perfect as I’m not worried about download costs or memory limitations — just the actual act of requesting new page views for every read.
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Yeah, I switched as well, and the only thing that would improve the package for me is if the mobile reader had an expanded mode.
There’s two things to worry about in mobiles and that’s storage and network. The current Google Reader Mobile is great for common cell phones that have low storage or memory on their embedded browsers but going back and forth between posts is a pain when the latency is as bad as it can be with some providers.
I’m on a Sidekick which has a great mobile browser and EDGE speeds, but not only do I need to deal with cell latency, I also have to face the Sidekick web service as well, which scales down/proxies pages and is sometimes an extra layer of “slowness.”
If there was an option where I could get a river of 20 items a page, all exposed at once, it would be perfect as I’m not worried about download costs or memory limitations — just the actual act of requesting new page views for every read.
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I went away all weekend, and returned to see my GReader was up to over 100 (all it says is 100+)… it was a little daunting, but not nearly so bad as if I had still been using RSS Bandit and had to sift through the different layers of organization.
I love the river, what can I say.
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I went away all weekend, and returned to see my GReader was up to over 100 (all it says is 100+)… it was a little daunting, but not nearly so bad as if I had still been using RSS Bandit and had to sift through the different layers of organization.
I love the river, what can I say.
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@scoble(#2) – multiple accounts becomes a headache because of trying to keep them open at the same time (at least it can with multiple Gmail accounts).
@jay(#26) – I’m going to try that.
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@scoble(#2) – multiple accounts becomes a headache because of trying to keep them open at the same time (at least it can with multiple Gmail accounts).
@jay(#26) – I’m going to try that.
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Due to email foul-ups at work, I just had to switch from NewsGator to Google Reader. So far, I’m liking it more than I expected. There’s definitely room for improvement (the subscription bar needs to be resizable, and the two-hotkey requirement to skip to the next feed makes no sense), but it’s still quite effective.
The thing that I miss from Newsgator the most is Fetch-links.
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Due to email foul-ups at work, I just had to switch from NewsGator to Google Reader. So far, I’m liking it more than I expected. There’s definitely room for improvement (the subscription bar needs to be resizable, and the two-hotkey requirement to skip to the next feed makes no sense), but it’s still quite effective.
The thing that I miss from Newsgator the most is Fetch-links.
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To everyone who says they want more than one river in Google Reader, try tags (or labels or folders as the UI also calls them, it’s all the same). The great thing about tags compared to folders is that I can have the same feed under more than one tag. I have tags such as “mustread”, “highvolume”, “friend”, “apple”, “humor”, etc.
For example, some feeds tagged with “apple” are also tagged “mustread”. If I feel like a little more Apple after I’m finished reading my “mustread” feeds, I click on the “apple” tag.
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To everyone who says they want more than one river in Google Reader, try tags (or labels or folders as the UI also calls them, it’s all the same). The great thing about tags compared to folders is that I can have the same feed under more than one tag. I have tags such as “mustread”, “highvolume”, “friend”, “apple”, “humor”, etc.
For example, some feeds tagged with “apple” are also tagged “mustread”. If I feel like a little more Apple after I’m finished reading my “mustread” feeds, I click on the “apple” tag.
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update to #49
Using tags for river-of-news works well. I had to throw away the Reader-in-Gmail Greasemonkey extension because it only allows all tags.
I still have problems with that one feed I can’t delete. I can’t change tags on it either. GRRR.
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update to #49
Using tags for river-of-news works well. I had to throw away the Reader-in-Gmail Greasemonkey extension because it only allows all tags.
I still have problems with that one feed I can’t delete. I can’t change tags on it either. GRRR.
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I used Bloglines exclusively for quite a while. I tried Google Reader when it first came out and liked how uncluttered it was. However I found myself switching back to Bloglines rather quickly.
But now it is exclusively the updated Google Reader. I love how easy it is to select a feed; g then u, type in the first few letters of the feed…jjj.
In Bloglines I absolutely hated it when you selected a feed that I hadn’t read in a while and marked everything as read. It is great that Reader does not do this until you actually select the post.
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I used Bloglines exclusively for quite a while. I tried Google Reader when it first came out and liked how uncluttered it was. However I found myself switching back to Bloglines rather quickly.
But now it is exclusively the updated Google Reader. I love how easy it is to select a feed; g then u, type in the first few letters of the feed…jjj.
In Bloglines I absolutely hated it when you selected a feed that I hadn’t read in a while and marked everything as read. It is great that Reader does not do this until you actually select the post.
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Two years in development, Snarfer is by far the fastest, easiest, reader. All format compliant and always free (no spyware, no adware).
At least try it, you’ll never go back to Google.
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Two years in development, Snarfer is by far the fastest, easiest, reader. All format compliant and always free (no spyware, no adware).
At least try it, you’ll never go back to Google.
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Kirk: I tried to try it, but I use a Macintosh now (at least part of the time) and Windows XP is required. Google wins because of that fact alone. Sorry.
Also, Snarfer doesn’t have a river of news feature that I can see on its Web page. Also, I don’t see keyboard shortcuts for Snarfer. Maybe it has them, but it doesn’t have a list right there. Also, I don’t see a way to share feed items with other people with Snarfer.
So, Google Reader wins. Next!
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Kirk: I tried to try it, but I use a Macintosh now (at least part of the time) and Windows XP is required. Google wins because of that fact alone. Sorry.
Also, Snarfer doesn’t have a river of news feature that I can see on its Web page. Also, I don’t see keyboard shortcuts for Snarfer. Maybe it has them, but it doesn’t have a list right there. Also, I don’t see a way to share feed items with other people with Snarfer.
So, Google Reader wins. Next!
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I agree, Robert. Google Reader is the way to go. I have probably doubled the number of feeds I have been able to keep up with in the past month or so. I have tried using the folders feature for organizing feeds–especially high priority versus others–with mixed results.
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I agree, Robert. Google Reader is the way to go. I have probably doubled the number of feeds I have been able to keep up with in the past month or so. I have tried using the folders feature for organizing feeds–especially high priority versus others–with mixed results.
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I use Omea Reader which works fine for me as it stores all the feeds in a nice big searchable database (to my knowledge this is still lacking in google reader)
but I did export my OPML file and upload it into Google for when I am on the road and without notebook.
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I use Omea Reader which works fine for me as it stores all the feeds in a nice big searchable database (to my knowledge this is still lacking in google reader)
but I did export my OPML file and upload it into Google for when I am on the road and without notebook.
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I just knew from Google Reader from you, and I tried it. Ten minutes later I was moving from Bloglines.
Now addicted as many as you at KKKKK! (yeh i start by the old ones).
Cheers
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I just knew from Google Reader from you, and I tried it. Ten minutes later I was moving from Bloglines.
Now addicted as many as you at KKKKK! (yeh i start by the old ones).
Cheers
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I like the looks of the Google Reader and have played with it a bit, but I’m pretty happy with Attensa for Outlook. Can’t believe it only came up in a sole pingback here!
First of all, I like desktop apps that can be used offline (I get a lot of reading in hunched over my laptop on the NYC subway, believe it or not). (Prior to using Attensa I was a diehard FeedDemon fan; I still like FeedDemon but have switched for reasons that will become clear.)
Secondly, Attensa’s tagging syncs well with del.icio.us, and it works beautifully in IE7 — there are at least two great Firefox extensions for posting to del.icio.us, but this is the best I’ve seen for IE — I like a popup form that allows me to toggle back to the page I’m bookmarking to have another look, which I often need to do while filling out the del.icio.us comment field.
Finally, I’m the social-web evangelist within my org and am always puzzling out which will be the easiest tools for busy staffers whose interests, more often than not, do not include playing with web apps. These people are already intimately familiar with Outlook — why not give them an RSS reader that slots in with what they’re comfortable with, and also slots into both Firefox and IE7 as a tagging tool?
I’m subscribed to hundreds of feeds, far more, sadly, than I can actually keep up with. I use the river-of-news view in Attensa, which is quite good I think. It uses attention data to surface the feeds you read the most (you can also sort by date.) I have a couple folders set up for the feeds I absolutely want to read daily and would like to read daily, and then about 15 other folders that I cull, through search, for whatever topic I want to read about on a given day. (Better than splog-filled technorati.)
Maybe I’d choose differently if I didn’t have this interest in encouraging the RSS habit across the enterprise. But for those whose enterprise is not entirely populated by geeks with mad skills, Attensa’s looking pretty good to me
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I switched to Google Reader a couple of weeks ago and it’s absolutely great compared to others I’ve used. What I especially like about it is the river style when you scan all headlines in a folder, AND, the keyboard shortcuts. Just click to open the first headline, then use the spacebar to go to the next, and so on. It’s amazing how something so simple can be so effective.
In reply to the first commenter: Wouldn’t it be nice if you had an RSS reader that actually learned which feeds and topics you liked the most? đŸ˜‰
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I switched to Google Reader a couple of weeks ago and it’s absolutely great compared to others I’ve used. What I especially like about it is the river style when you scan all headlines in a folder, AND, the keyboard shortcuts. Just click to open the first headline, then use the spacebar to go to the next, and so on. It’s amazing how something so simple can be so effective.
In reply to the first commenter: Wouldn’t it be nice if you had an RSS reader that actually learned which feeds and topics you liked the most? đŸ˜‰
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I like the looks of the Google Reader and have played with it a bit, but I’m pretty happy with Attensa for Outlook. Can’t believe it only came up in a sole pingback here!
First of all, I like desktop apps that can be used offline (I get a lot of reading in hunched over my laptop on the NYC subway, believe it or not). (Prior to using Attensa I was a diehard FeedDemon fan; I still like FeedDemon but have switched for reasons that will become clear.)
Secondly, Attensa’s tagging syncs well with del.icio.us, and it works beautifully in IE7 — there are at least two great Firefox extensions for posting to del.icio.us, but this is the best I’ve seen for IE — I like a popup form that allows me to toggle back to the page I’m bookmarking to have another look, which I often need to do while filling out the del.icio.us comment field.
Finally, I’m the social-web evangelist within my org and am always puzzling out which will be the easiest tools for busy staffers whose interests, more often than not, do not include playing with web apps. These people are already intimately familiar with Outlook — why not give them an RSS reader that slots in with what they’re comfortable with, and also slots into both Firefox and IE7 as a tagging tool?
I’m subscribed to hundreds of feeds, far more, sadly, than I can actually keep up with. I use the river-of-news view in Attensa, which is quite good I think. It uses attention data to surface the feeds you read the most (you can also sort by date.) I have a couple folders set up for the feeds I absolutely want to read daily and would like to read daily, and then about 15 other folders that I cull, through search, for whatever topic I want to read about on a given day. (Better than splog-filled technorati.)
Maybe I’d choose differently if I didn’t have this interest in encouraging the RSS habit across the enterprise. But for those whose enterprise is not entirely populated by geeks with mad skills, Attensa’s looking pretty good to me
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I’ve come to rely solely on Google Reader. First, my feeds are note limited to an application sitting on the computer at work, or at home, and syncing opml files… bleck
The new version is slick, easy to read, I’m hooked… adios Pluck
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I’ve come to rely solely on Google Reader. First, my feeds are note limited to an application sitting on the computer at work, or at home, and syncing opml files… bleck
The new version is slick, easy to read, I’m hooked… adios Pluck
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Robert: Many thanks for your comments, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Snarfer users (50,000+) believe speed is the most important function of a reader. While Google Reader is still loading your feed page Snarfer users have finished reading their feeds and are enjoying a nice cup of coffee.
We designed and built Snarfer (snarfware.com) for power feed users who need to read 100s (even 1000s) of feeds fast AND perform analyses of that data. A nice note is we did this in a 360kb download that includes a custom SQL database (that’s an accomplishment all by itself).
We know many folks like Google Reader but when you try Snarfer you’ll never go back to a browser based slow reader. Like Google’s Reader, Snarfer is FREE and contains no spyware or adware. So load it up and try it, honest you’ll never go back.
Cheers,
Kirk
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Robert: Many thanks for your comments, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Snarfer users (50,000+) believe speed is the most important function of a reader. While Google Reader is still loading your feed page Snarfer users have finished reading their feeds and are enjoying a nice cup of coffee.
We designed and built Snarfer (snarfware.com) for power feed users who need to read 100s (even 1000s) of feeds fast AND perform analyses of that data. A nice note is we did this in a 360kb download that includes a custom SQL database (that’s an accomplishment all by itself).
We know many folks like Google Reader but when you try Snarfer you’ll never go back to a browser based slow reader. Like Google’s Reader, Snarfer is FREE and contains no spyware or adware. So load it up and try it, honest you’ll never go back.
Cheers,
Kirk
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Kirk: are you using Firefox 2 with Google Reader? It pops right up for me in less than four seconds and is faster to get through feeds than any feed reader I know of. J J J J J J and I’m through six items, no clicking, no scrolling. If you can read all your feeds and drink a cup of coffee in four seconds (and that’s on my slow IBM ThinkPad, it’s even faster on my new MacPro) then you’re a lot faster than me. Not to mention that I kick open a ton of browser windows in the morning and go back and forth.
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Kirk: are you using Firefox 2 with Google Reader? It pops right up for me in less than four seconds and is faster to get through feeds than any feed reader I know of. J J J J J J and I’m through six items, no clicking, no scrolling. If you can read all your feeds and drink a cup of coffee in four seconds (and that’s on my slow IBM ThinkPad, it’s even faster on my new MacPro) then you’re a lot faster than me. Not to mention that I kick open a ton of browser windows in the morning and go back and forth.
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Ian and Kirk, I do agree that offline is a killer feature, though. It’s why I keep FeedDemon and ITunes and Fireant.tv and Attensa going.
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Ian and Kirk, I do agree that offline is a killer feature, though. It’s why I keep FeedDemon and ITunes and Fireant.tv and Attensa going.
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Yes noticed that Firefox was a bit faster. We’re getting ready for a new release in 1-2 weeks that adds even more powerful features like tabbed browsing and some interesting database mining tools.
Hope you’ll all least give Snarfer a try. Hey you can uninstall it and it doens’t leave anything behind so there’s no downside.
Cheers,
Kirk
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Yes noticed that Firefox was a bit faster. We’re getting ready for a new release in 1-2 weeks that adds even more powerful features like tabbed browsing and some interesting database mining tools.
Hope you’ll all least give Snarfer a try. Hey you can uninstall it and it doens’t leave anything behind so there’s no downside.
Cheers,
Kirk
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I’m surprised – no one has mentioned OnFolio.
It does everything Google does and more. Only drawback is when they were acquired by MS, the support for Firefox stopped.
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I’m surprised – no one has mentioned OnFolio.
It does everything Google does and more. Only drawback is when they were acquired by MS, the support for Firefox stopped.
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