As of July 1, Google Reader will be no more. I know some of you are heavy RSS users like myself. Have you devised a transition plan? I'm looking into options right now, and Feedly looks like it's offering an easy transition from Reader as well as apps for smartphones and Chrome.
http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/tips-for-google-reader-users-migrating-to-feedly/
Anybody else have a good alternative?
I'm trying Feedly right now; it's mostly okay, I guess, but the bells and whistles just make the basic functionality I want more awkward.
It did seem to set up with my Google Reader bookmarks easily, which is great. But it also seems to keep claiming that some of my feeds have unread stuff when they shouldn't, and it decides that some entries are Featured (why it's decided that a few results of my saved CL searches are "featured" I have no idea), and though there is a link to mark that group as read, it seems to have no effect.
I have no idea how much of this behavior is due to them getting nuked with traffic as soon as Google started notifying folks that Reader was shutting down. When I initially tried it yesterday, I couldn't even get to their site.
I may just end up using Thunderbird's news/RSS functionality...
As long as we're on the topic, is there a link somewhere to the GRM-family RSS feeds all in one place? I think I've got three or four GRM or CM feeds, and some seem to duplicate others, at least one shows the title as unknown while it does have a summary...
ransom wrote: I'm trying Feedly right now; it's mostly okay, I guess, but the bells and whistles just make the basic functionality I want more awkward.
Agreed. It has more graphical gingerbread than I'd like, but it'll do. But I'm not happy about this, and I've signed an online petition asking Google to reconsider: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57574226-93/petitions-beg-google-to-reconsider-closure-of-reader/
For some folks, it's an even bigger deal: http://qz.com/62867/google-readers-demise-is-awful-for-iranians-who-use-it-to-avoid-censorship/
Google’s announcement that it’s killing off Google Reader, the company’s beloved, if not wildly popular, tool for consuming RSS feeds, was met with outrage from journalists and other, largely American nerds who rely on it to efficiently churn through blogs and other websites. But the real tragedy is likely to be felt in countries like Iran, where Google Reader is used to evade government censorship.
My wife uses GR heavily and she will be bummed. Thanks for the tip on Feedly.
ransom wrote: As long as we're on the topic, is there a link somewhere to the GRM-family RSS feeds all in one place? I think I've got three or four GRM or CM feeds, and some seem to duplicate others, at least one shows the title as unknown while it does have a summary...
GRM helps those who helps themselves: But is this list current-ish?
The big problem for me is the syncing across multiple machines/devices. I might simply have to go to feedly for that as most of the real desktop apps and phone/tablet apps currently want Google Reader as a common store.
I'll miss it, but I'm going to wait a month or so before looking for an alternative. Let the developers come up with some good options first. It's still here until June 1st.
In reply to Keith Tanner:
Hmmm... If I am a web developer, and what I want most is an RSS reader almost entirely lacking in extraneous features...
No. No more projects.
I'll probably give Feedly a try, before I settled on Google Reader I tried some other web-based RSS readers that were decent.
Alan Cesar wrote: As of July 1, Google Reader will be no more. I know some of you are heavy RSS users like myself. Have you devised a transition plan? I'm looking into options right now, and Feedly looks like it's offering an easy transition from Reader as well as apps for smartphones and Chrome. http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/tips-for-google-reader-users-migrating-to-feedly/ Anybody else have a good alternative?
Books?
In reply to Jerry From LA:
Perhaps I'd be calmer if I just got a nicely bound quarterly summary of the Craigslist finds I missed...
I'm sorry all you folk are being affected this way ... and I'm glad I don't have any flipping idea what you're talking about 
ransom wrote: As long as we're on the topic, is there a link somewhere to the GRM-family RSS feeds all in one place? I think I've got three or four GRM or CM feeds, and some seem to duplicate others, at least one shows the title as unknown while it does have a summary...
Yeah, you've got the right feeds. There's no aggregate feed, but that's something I'm hoping to get addressed with the site redesign once that starts rolling: One feed to rule them all.
wbjones wrote: I'm sorry all you folk are being affected this way ... and I'm glad I don't have any flipping idea what you're talking about
This. I've heard of RSS and have a vague idea of what it is. I prefer to go looking for news and info on the web. I don't need it knocking on my door.
In reply to 1988RedT2:
It doesn't knock on your door, you still go seek it out. It doesn't send you email. But if you visit a lot of sites, it saves time because you can see all the updates in one place instead of several. I subscribe to a bunch of major news sites as well as car blogs, humor blogs, tech sites and web comics, and can read them all in one place. It's a faster way to flip through a lot of content.
For the Noob in the room, what exactly is an RSS feed? I have never read one, mostly because I only have time for this board and the back of my kids cereal box. But should I want to make better use of my iPad, what is the attraction and use of RSS?
pinchvalve wrote: For the Noob in the room, what exactly is an RSS feed? I have never read one, mostly because I only have time for this board and the back of my kids cereal box. But should I want to make better use of my iPad, what is the attraction and use of RSS?
It's an "aggregator", or a way of putting a bunch of information in one place. So, instead of going to GRM, Autoweek, Detroit News, Engadget, USA Today, and all the other sites I like to keep an eye on individually, I subscribe to their RSS feeds. Then when I go to my RSS reader, all their new stories are there for me to quickly scan and see if anything interests me. All in one place. It's a big time saver if you have varied interests and like to keep abreast of news from a lot of different sources.
Example . . . I have a RSS feed set up for CL to deliver all new ads for cars under 2k for cities of my choosing . . .
Simply put RSS feeds deliver all the stuff YOU want to one place.
Edit: What Tom said 
In reply to pinchvalve:
You have a handful of sites you visit regularly. Some of them update every day, some update less often, or irregularly. Instead of visiting each of these sites independently, you subscribe to the site's RSS feed. Most sites have them. (You can also subscribe to podcasts this way.) I've come across sites with really cool content, but they update super weird. Sometimes there'll be two updates in a week, then nothing for 3 months. Instead of going back there whenever I remember, I just add them to my feeds. Then I know if anything's been updated.
So, you go to a feed reader application or website. You can either punch your favorite site's name into the reader's search tool or grab the RSS feed location directly from the site. The RSS icon looks like this (but you won't always the logo on a site, even if it has a feed. sometimes you can just search for "rss" on that page):
An RSS location can look like a regular URL, like:
http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/feeds/projects/
or not:
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510208
http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss
Then, once you've subscribed to everything you want, you can just pay your daily/weekly/hourly visit to your feed reader page and see what sites have posted updates. It saves time over going to all those sites individually, and you can just skim the headlines and decide what you want to read.
But, if you don't already visit a bunch of sites and you spend relatively little time on the internet, it might not be of much help to you.
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