#reader

Added all 449 "Bundles" that Google Reader provides, plus their 27 "featured bundles" from famous people, and then added some top feeds that were the result of searches for a few keywords.

It might appear like gloom and doom (actually, if it doesn't, you're not looking), but really it's a massive opportunity. Again, anyone who uses a news reader can't imagine having to live without one, yet I see the feed ecosystem slowly deteriorating with no replacement in sight. That's the opportunity, in my mind. It's not about simply mimicking Google Reader (which I would never do anyways, as I've never liked it), but about bootstrapping off the system we have today, in order to create a new type of news reader for tomorrow. The future of news readers, so to speak. ;-)

Now, we’ll be forced to fill the hole that Reader will leave behind, and there’s no immediately obvious alternative. We’re finally likely to see substantial innovation and competition in RSS desktop apps and sync platforms for the first time in almost a decade.

I've made it possible to import all your shared or starred articles from Google Reader into Pinboard. You can find step-by-step instructions for this on the import page Like a boss.

The shareable social object of subscribe-able items makes Reader’s network unique and the answer to why change is painful for many of its users is because no obvious alternative network exists with exactly that object. The social object of Google+ is…nearly anything and its diffuse model is harder to evaluate or appreciate. The value of a social network seems to map proportionally to the perceived value of its main object. (Examples: sharing best-of-web links on Metafilter or sharing hi-res photos on Flickr or sharing video art on Vimeo or sharing statuses on Twitter/Facebook or sharing questions on Quora.) If you want a community with stronger ties, provide more definition to your social object.

I've ditched Google Reader, but this is still worth knowing

Yesterday, I got an email from a good friend with a subject line that needed no further explanation: "Google Reader." It was sent to a group of mutual friends, bemoaning the recent changes to Reader's interface, thereby kicking off a lengthy dis...

This page explains various methods to update feeds with tt-rss and caveats involved. You have to setup one of this methods before you can start using tt-rss properly, otherwise your feeds won't be updated.

Last night the changes to Google Reader went live, and as promised, they've removed the sharing features. This means that the sharing features in FeedDemon which rely on Google Reader will eventually stop working, so I'm forced to remove them.

Okay, so it’s not exactly Occupy Wall Street, and the cause isn’t quite so dire as the recklessness of investment bankers gone wild or the government bailouts, but Google Reader is being cut off at the knees, and a number of its die-hard fans (including a few I know from Google Reader) have taken to the street to protest.

Word on the street is Google Reader’s social functions, its funky community of shares and comments, and the archives of these interactions, will all be flushed down the memory hole tomorrow.

One of the fascinating things about Google Reader is how each group of sharebros/Reader Partiers/Gooderioon came up with their own culture within the system, in parallel of and isolation from one another, but fundamentally similar in intent and function.

When Google announced last week that Google Reader, an RSS aggregator with social-networking capability, would be rolling its social features into Google+, its disappointed readers felt helpless and disenfranchised against a powerful force.

The skies are threatening as Ryan Ellis briskly walks up I Street NW to join a small group of people who had spent the last half-hour making signs in front of Google's D.C. headquarters. "This is the most loserish protest ever!" he laughs, taking up a sign that read "GOOGLE: DON'T MARK ALL AS READ."

In short: This sucks. Google is trying to force its very loyal Reader user base into using Google+ instead. And I don’t wanna! Google Reader already works for me; it’s not broken. And I’m not the only one who’s pissed. In the Atlantic, Adam Clark Estes notes that “the world is surprisingly angry about the end of Google Reader.” Of course, it’s not the whole world that cares, but primarly the “Sharebros”

Google released the previously announced set of changes around G+ integration and UI updates today, and boy is it a disaster. Since the general changes were pre-announced last week, most of us were prepared for the letdown, but actually seeing how it works end to end has made several flaws abundantly clear. Let's start with the obvious.

"This script checks if the html contains alternate links to a feed on every page you visit. When an unknown feed found, it sends a request to google reader using your account for the number of subscribers. And it caches the number for subsequent visits. The cache is cleared every 24 hours."

"AideRSS is pleased to provide a Firefox extension to harness the power of PostRank™ to score, filter and track performance of any RSS feed directly within GoogleReader. Now GoogleReader users can reclaim their time with a single mouse click to find the best content, boost their productivity and stay on top of the news."

"For the last few years or so, I've been fortunate enough to have my day job involve thinking critically about reading feeds. As a result, I've been musing about first principles."

"Well, that was fast. Google Gears hasn't even been announced yet, and already Google Reader users can install it and wallow in the splendor that is offline reading."