Beyond Google Reader - Part 5

Maybe the final part... but then again, maybe not.

Yesterday my Feedly account got migrated from Google Reader Backend to the Feedly backend - the Feedly Cloud.

Can be verified at the URL http://www.feedly.com/home#console.

You'll either see Google Reader or feedly cloud as the back end service (in the nice json output you get there).

So on all of my devices (PC, laptop, Android mobile, iPad) I'm on feedly now. Google Reader bookmark and app... unpinned and gone.
Fingers crossed.

I hope that Reedr - still my favorite on the iPad - will use the feedly cloud soon.

Beyond Google Reader - Part 4

So, feedly finally announced that they are building the back-end service for the Google Reader replacement and - more importantly - are working with 3rd party app developers such as Reeder to support them... *before* the sun will set on Google Reader.

Building Feedly | Re-imagine how people keep in touch with their favorite sites.: 

"We have been working behind the curtains with the developers of Reeder,Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader as design partners for our Normandy project[1]. Today we are excited to announce that you will be able to access your feedly from all these apps before Google Reader retires and that the access to feedly API will be free. More details soon."

Beyond Google Reader - Part 3

So, only 5 more weeks or so to go before we geeks have to eke out our miserable existence without Google Reader.
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I will most probably switch to Feedly.

Here's where I stand today:

• I mostly gave up the Google Reader app on my Android mobile, 99.9% on Feedly.
• On my iPad I do 80% on Reeder, 20% on Feedly... and Feedly's share is increasing.
  Reeder's future is not entirely clear, except they say they plan to continue.
• On the PC I'm also 80% still in Google Reader, 20% in Feedly.

Basically I'm waiting for Feedly to launch their own back-end service, then import (hopefully auto-magically) my Google Reader feeds in there and just continue.

Ah, and in the meantime Digg seems to be progressing with their Reader back-end. Let's hope they'll launch it openly for any reader app out there.

Beyond Google Reader - Part 1

I'm pretty sure this will become a series, so I decided to call this post here part 1 ...

After Google announced the shutdown of Google Reader two days ago, the internet was of course full of rants and stuff. Some even declared RSS dead. Yeah, right... Whatever.

I want to stick to RSS (as a style of receiving and consuming news, articles and posts) for as long as possible. And I need my reader synchronized between devices.

Always.

Here's why.

1. I start with Reeder on my iPad in the morning (at home);
2. then on the train & underground on my commute to work I usually continue reading a lot (or rather quickly browse through the headlines) on my Android Phone using Google Reader (ahem). Interesting articles which I really want to read on a proper screen are save to pocket.
3. And then at work (as well as at home) there is always one browser tab open with Google Reader. 

So I have this one feed of news wherever I am.
Therefore I need the (almost) instant synchronization of the read/unread state between devices. And this is what Google Reader did perfectly.

Google Reader is was not only a front-end / user-interface, but also this great back-end synchronization service (or rather: central repository). Reeder, Feedly, Pulse, Flipboard, ... they are were all relying on this infrastructure.
This now needs to be replicated or picked up by someone else.

A new hope:
In the aftermath of thurday's EOL announcement, Feedly (which I was using a bit already on my Android) said, they were actually anticipating this move by Google, and already starting building their own backend infrastructure, essentially cloning on the Google Reader API. And more importantly, that they will open this to others.

So my hope is now that

1. Feedly will do the backend service 
2. existing clients like Reeder (unbeatably, to me),  Flipboard, ... will use this service and concentrate on the GUI. (This of course includes Feedly, the client, as well)

In the meantime, if you are facing a situation like mine, I suggest you try feedly.

Go and get the Chrome or Firefox plugin, the iOS app, or the Android app. Or all. Here.

Fingers crossed.

Reading 2.0

The iPad and a couple of additional tools (not 100% related to it) changed my online reading habits a lot.

Here's my "Reading 2.0" or rather: as of December 2010, it will probably evolve further:

1. I have Google Reader as the central management point for the RSS feeds (blogs, news, ...)
2. about 30% of those articles I read online while I'm in front of a PC.
3. the rest I scan on my iPad using Reeder.
4. Most of the interesting articles and postings I save for later reading with Read it later, also on the iPad with their app.
5. Item with more "eternal" value might then get save to delicious, but that's only one or two a week.

So basically I separated the consumption phase (step 4) above from the discovery phase (step 3 above).

Feeding the iPad

The top use of my iPad is reading the tech news - through RSS feeds.
There is an excellent RSS reader for the iPad called Reeder.
Here are my favourite bullets about Reeder:

1. makes full use of iPad geometry
2. uses Google Reader as the feed list;
   not only import, but actually works with it; so everything I read on my iPad is automatically marked as read in Google Reader; perfect way to stay in sync
3. easy to step through articles.
   there are scroll buttons on at the left edge in the middle of the screen; I first wondered, why they had been position there, but once you get used to holding the iPad in landscape mode, this is exactly the position where your left thumb is... tricky,ey ?
   Scrolling is a lot more convenient this way, then with the mouse or the J / K buttons in Google Reader
4. it's a lean back experience.
   This - to me - is new for news consumption via feeds and I really prefer it over the laptop / desktop experience.
5. You can easily (one click) save/share articles to Delcious, Twitter, email, ...

Quick summary: perfect feed reader on the perfect news device.

share.opml.org, retired

Dave Winer reports on Scripting News:

"We turned off share.opml.org yesterday, for good, as far as I know. It was a good idea, but we never got it together to make it the powerhouse I wanted it to be"

It was a nice and interesting idea and service, and I got some interesting patterns and information out of it, but hardly anyone used it.

To be frank, I haven't uploaded my OPML in months (years?)...

Bugzilla RSS vs Google Reader

I've been monitoring the Mozilla Lightning bugs in bugzilla for a while now using an RSS feed of bugzilla into my Google Reader.
I frequently noticed that the information on some bugs was not complete, but did not really care.
Today's view however, was the best so far and comes with quite some aesthetic touch:


You can really watch as Google Reader tries to retrieve the feed and fails, tries again 3 hours later, gets some more date, and fails ... etc etc ... ad inf.

But it looks great.

Google Reader: recommendations and drag-and-drop

Two cool new features, reported by the Google Reader Blog and tested by your's truly:

1. Recommendations

   you'll see quite a few feeds that we think you may find interesting. "Interesting" here is determined by what other feeds you subscribe to, as well as your Web History data, all taken into account in an automated, anonymized fashion. (To learn more about how our recommendations work, see our help article about them).



2. drag & drop interface in the "folder pane"...
   (not sure Google calls it folder pane, but in all other programs with the same kind of UI it is called that)
   

RSS becoming dominant

I just noticed, that RSS (or rather the RSS reader, google in my case) is becoming more and more important as a means of accessing content.
I really "read" more Flickr updates through Google Reader, than directly in Flickr. One reason is, that it is easier and faster to navigate in a feed oriented reader.

Web 2.0 - we need to rethink ...

Just found a great video (through Charles Beckham's Weblog) by Mike Wesch which - for me - illustrates the essence of Web 2.0

Amazon supports RSS web feeds

Finally amazon.com (not .de or .at, mind you) supports RSS feeds based on product tags.
RSS web feeds for tagged products (syndication)

So you can have all the newly available (or upcoming) products in your RSS reader, provided you find the right tags.
Unfortunately they do no allow combinations of tags, so you can search for e.g. "Seinfeld" but not for "Seinfeld + DVD"; neither a "+" (a.k.a. urlencoded space) nor %2B nor %26 (+ and & respectively) do work. Concatenating the tags like /seinfeld/dvd/... doesn't work either.

Well, as long as they don't have it in an amazon near me (i.e. .de or .at) it doesn't really bother me that much.

eBay to support RSS

eBay now supports RSS feeds for searches;
well at least I just discovered them, might be that they support them quite a while, but I just haven't noticed.
Anyway this is a cool feature.
I'd just love to see an RSS feed on my watch list as well.

Firefox 2 and Google Reader

Firefox 2 can directly subscribe RSS/Atom feeds to Google Reader.
I love it.

Calacanis' Podcast device

Jason Calacanis sketches a new postcast-only device he wants to build together with Dave Winer and Peter Rojas; which is obviously DRM free ("obviously" because it's Dave Winer and its about podcasting - so there), and able to fully support Wifi.

At one point, when they talk about how Wifi could be used to download music from your PC (or the net) as well as exchange podcasts between devices, Dave says that obviously RSS would be used for that.

At first I just thought: how typical for him - everything has to be RSS. But then I thought a bit more about it - and yes, he's right: RSS (as well as Atom, in my point of view) would do the job. And quite well, too.

Listen to it on CalacanisCast Beta 7: Dave Winer and Peter Rojas discuss the RWC Podcast player - The Jason Calacanis Weblog

PS: I myself am still using my iPod nano to listen to podcasts - and I still like it - no matter what everyone else says.

technorati tags: RSS, iPod, Wifi, podcast