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The RSS Reader Reader's Lament
I am still pretending that this is not happening, but for those of you who are mature enough to recognize you need to find a new RSS reader here are some other options. Also, if you're the praying sort, do a few for this.
PLEASE BE GENTLE:
Uh…what is/was Google Reader and what is an RSS Feed?
@IBentMyWookie RSS originally stood for something I can't remember, but has since been rebranded as "really simple syndication." It is essentially a file that organizes some or all of the content on a site and often metadata (tags, post dates and times, authors, etc.) into a format that be taken elsewhere and read/displayed/used. Often the widgets on the sidebars of people's personal blogs such as "recently liked" or "now reading" are powered by RSS. The main use for RSS however is to collect stuff from frequently updated websites in one place for personal reading. In most browsers, when you visit a blog or news site you'll see a little orange box with white quarter circles in your browser's address bar; click it and you'll see the RSS file.
Google Reader is/was the best way to organize a bunch of these. You give it the addresses from those little orange boxes from all your favorite sites, and then you can see from one place when all of them are updated and with what. Like most RSS readers, it somewhat resembled an email client, with a list if folders (tags in Google Reader's case) in the left column and the posts' subject lines running down the main column in reverse chronological order.
RSS/readers are maybe a little overkill for the average web user, who might check in on a half dozen sites once or twice a day before retreating to Facebook, but if you want to keep up with hundreds of sites multiple times a day (ie professional bloggers) it's the only way.
@IBentMyWookie Contrary to what I say below (I contain etc.), I'd say if you've made it this far you probably don't need to know?
@stuffisthings That's what I'm thinking….
@conklin Excellent, thank you.
@IBentMyWookie
i guess it's time for us to try feedly instead?
As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of people on the Internet: people who have no idea what Google Reader is, and people who are really super bummed it's shutting down.
Do most people really, like, manually type in "t-h-e-a-w-l-dot-c-o-m" and hit refresh every so often to see if there are new articles? Mind boggling. I mean no offense to people who have legitimately never used an RSS reader before, but I can't imagine keeping up with more than about three blogs without one.
@stuffisthings The Awl auto-refreshes for your convenience.
@stuffisthings The Awl doesn't really update all that much. Just have multiple tabs open on favorite blogs.
@stuffisthings Or you could use Farhad Manjoo's ludicrous system which makes him sound as demented as I always suspected he was.
@stuffisthings that is… i don't understand why anybody would do that
@stuffisthings Farhad's system sounds like being trapped in an old school arcade game in which shit is frantically flying all over the place and you are constantly mashing buttons to deal with it before it overwhelms your humble little ship. Dislike.
@conklin Dude should just hook his RSS feeds up to a set of high-speed laser printers, strip naked, and jump around in the flurry of papers.
I mean I kind of assume that's how most tech bloggers operate anyway?
@stuffisthings I really do.
I follow way more blogs, sites etc. than the average person but way less than a full-time,professional blogger type apparently and I feel like twitter has pretty much eliminated the need for any sort of RSS reader.
The guys at Ycombinator might know a thing or two more than lifehacker. Watch geeks vote on their favorite replacement (although they did not break them down by online/offline): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5373538
I just started using Feedly today (came here from there), and so far it's taken all the stress out of the Google Reader news for me. Also, yeah, it's really pretty. As long as the wheels stay on the tracks when GReader actually shuts down (fingers crossed, Normandy!), I'll still be happy. Easy for me to say, though, since I don't use GReader to keep anything: it's strictly catch and release. Keeping stuff is what Pinterest is for, right?
*sigh* I have been using Flipboard on my phone and ipad to push my Google reader feeds through for about two years now. I really like it quite a bit, but they don't have a desktop interface.
I'm test driving Feedly, but I suspect that by July I'll have 15 different rss platforms obsessively updated with my google reader feed and I'll still feel incomplete. The thing I'll miss the most, of course, is the super full feeds extension on Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/super-full-feeds-for-goog/khbjahpecnkenngkidhioicnfpakihgo/details
If someone finds an RSS platform with this, lemme know.
I like Pulse. It categorizes things, so I don't have to. And I'm all about the categorical imperative.
PS: Digg Reader? Doesn't it come with Digg attached?