RSS Aggregation Aggravation - The Final Part(?)

I hoping this'll be the last post in this series (rant!).

With Google Readers demise I've been pushed out of my comfy zone and need to find a fix for a new RSS reader.  If you've never used one briefly RSS is a method used by websites to "broadcast" the content of that site to users who have "subscribed".  Essentially you then have a "reader" which has "feeds" from these source sites you've selected.  You open up the reader and there is a list of all the new stories you can go read.  If you join sites in Blogger or Favourite them in Wordpress you get a similar, if very limited thing, off you home page/dashboard in those tools.  The benefit with RSS is that it is open and not tied to any blog tool etc. you can have news sites, blogs etc. etc.   So I have all my blogs in mine categorised into groupings, like work, Blogs, Guitar etc.

So here is the (hopefully!) final view.

I used to use Bloglines - so went back there first.  However whilst exporting from Reader and into Bloglines was fine several of my regular feeds didn't seem to now work.  I knew I'd have to go around getting them to work probably by reconnecting - a bit of a pain.  Also I saw several forum comments that they didn't seem to be too helpful if you couldn't get a feed working again.  Also the mobile look and feel wasn't good coupled with the lack of an Andriod app left me less than happy.

I tried Netvibes - which Bloglines is driven by - same issues as above.

I looked at The Old Reader - set up by some guys to mimic how Google Reader used to work.  Hmm - went to import my subscribtions.  3 days later it still says there are 17,000 plus people in the queue in front of me... No Andriod app either... moving on...

Feedly - suggested by Dr 24 hrs - who I should listen to more often - highly clever guy.  Feedly connects directly to Google Reader - so no import / export.  The interface is new and snazzy, very modern - but despite me going "Whoaa what is this?" I'm now getting the hang of it.  The Andriod app is ok but I did find I couldn't type when I got to a site to comment but I fiddled and... still didn't work ... then it did.  I don't know what I did but the problem is fixed now, might have been the old "switch it off and back on" without me realising I'd done that - by the way I have letters after my name proving I am an IT professional you know!  Feedly have committed to a new engine underneath which will replace them relying on the Google Reader API and say they will migrate users transparently under the covers.  We'll see how that goes but looks like they've been thinking on it for a while expecting Google/Reader to go and one they are publicly committed to.

So I'm settled on Feedly for the moment and will get that working for me.

Comments

  1. I saw this morning that Feedly was coming highly recommended. I'm glad you found it already. Hope it keeps going "well".

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  2. i finally got notified that my subscriptions were uploaded to theoldreader... went had a look. meh. i guess i got used to the new reader. so i'll check out feedly as well. appreciate that they gave us time to get this sorted out first!

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    Replies
    1. hmm... I got an email back from theoldreader - exactly 8 days after submitting my subscriptions telling me they'd loaded. I didn't bother to go and look frankly!

      I'm sort of doing ok with Feedly - although I do feel I'm not commenting as much as I used to - not sure if that is because I'm less inclined now to go to the site to comment and that is because of Feedly or not... not sure.

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