So I built NewsBlur -- http://www.newsblur.com. It's open-source and I'd love if more folks followed my development: http://github.com/samuelclay.
It's been a weekend project but it's been a wild ride so far. One of my main goals is to have much of the functionality of Google Reader, most of which has slowly made its way into NewsBlur. I'm currently working on a free iOS app for NewsBlur. I also put out an API so that others could also make their own feed reader.
But really, I missed seeing the original site more than anything. It looks like a security hole, but NewsBlur actually just proxies the site and displays it back to the user. And the intelligence slider keeps me sane, since I slide it towards green and my unread count comes down to a manageable level.
Also, no offense, but you should ask some designer friend to polish the UI because this looks very good already and it can be even better.
+ I prefer to see the RSS text before I see the original site. Easier reading (no nav or ads) and I'll click through if the content catches my interest. So it would be nice if I clicked the feed tab that tab would stay selected as I browsed my other feeds (rather than switching back to the default original tab)
+ I use folders in GReader to group my feeds. I have a ton of feeds and a lot of them are not updated often. One of my favorite features of GReader is the ability to click on a folder and see that folder's feed. Saves a ton of individual feed reading and the folder mark as read is a time saver (I read the headlines and don't want to read the individual topics)
+ I need better marked as read (a button). The context menu is nice but requires two clicks (give me a hot key).
+ The config icons in the bottom sidebar get lost behind chrome's stupid appearing status bar making it frustrating to use these when the feed is loading.
+ Minor - I'd like to see the feed list above the site or rss txt body (more like a email client) Is there a way to configure the layout of the panes?
In all this is pretty exciting!
* Feed before original site? No problem, set Feed as the default in Preferences. Also, if you like one view or another, it saves per-site.
* To read all stories in a folder, just click the River of News icon next to the folder. It's exactly the same. You can also right-click the folder (or click the little arrow) and mark the folder as read.
* Plenty of Keyboard Shortcuts. Type `?`
* I'm working on more customization of the interface as we speak. You'll be able to move panes around, change sort order, etc.
I don't see a mark folder as read shortcut (did I miss it). I can context click on the river of news icon, but I'd love a button (and shortcut) next to the "Next Unread" in the dividing bar. I wouldn't text an icon button would do to save space (maybe a preference shut off text in toolbars)
real nice.
Check the git history on GitHub. This has been by no means an easy feat, but little by little, you can build a 6-server service (and learn about every single component in the meantime).
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-multiple-sig...
But one gripe, when is newsblur going to get google reader sync. As many have mentioned on this thread they like using google reader as the backend sync between many clients. There is already a issue in github.
I'm thinking about further integration with Google using Google Contacts (for a Email Story feature), but that's about it.
This poses a problem for me, and possibly others though. I like to attempt to read almost all of what comes down my funnel. I have built a priority system already inside of google reader. I have folders basicaly 1 - 10, that ranks the importance of things. For example, I can usually read my folder 1 everyday, 100% of it. As I have time I will read through lower folders.
So, with this system I have done part of what newsblur does which is to help me seek the good stuff. This even works across clients. So I can use the google reader web UI, and Reeder.
I would love to be able to use the newsblur web UI in place of the google reader API, but without the sync it wouldn't fit into my system.
I know that my system may not be something you want to cater to, but hopefully you can understand how for some people google reader sync is very important.
It's not ideal, but that means you can still use Original view for the 90% of sites that you still want to see. Plus you can set the Feed view as the default and just switch to the Original view on a per-site basis.
The tiny things w.r.t to the UX are subtle and yet there. And there the option to view the content in the original site design.
You just inspired me again!
I'm not a big fan of the original-site-view myself but I suppose it can come in handy sometimes. The addition of the API is quite welcome, opens up a lot of new possibilities.
Anyway, give Samuel some money so he can keep working on Newsblur, it's awesome.
One thing, I can't see an obvious way to become a premium member. I think you might get more conversions if it was way more obvious on the front page.
but something about seeing the original site. I totally agree you're missing something in a RSS reader. But well, when the connection is slow (my residence is in Bolivia ...), what matters most is the content and not the container, right? I'd rather receive the news quickly than waiting the website logo.
Here is an experiment that uses 'profiles' as a basis for content extraction:
I need a priority queue RSS reader. Show me the N most "important" posts across all my feeds since I last visited. Importance would be calculated a number of ways:
* Prioritize posts from low volume feeds. I probably want to see every post from a friend who blogs once a month, but not every post from Engadget.
* Most favorited/liked/whatever, especially among my friends.
* Similar posts to things I've favorited/liked/whatever in the past.
* Manually tagging certain feeds as important.
Also, I have this problem other "streams" of information, like Twitter, and email (Gmail's Priority Inbox is a good start). Some people I follow post a lot of useless stuff, but I still follow them because they're friends or sometimes say interesting things.
Is there anything remotely like this out there?
""" A third option, Sort by magic will rank items by "magic." Personalized magic ranking is automatically generated, taking into account your past reading behavior (including liking and starring) and global signals. We'll do our best to display items in the most relevant and interesting order -- click the Like button on things you think are important or enjoy reading, and we'll learn to put items like that first. """
http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
Ideally it would hide all but the top 10 or 50 or 100 posts, and if I finish reading those I could see more. Opening up an RSS reader and seeing hundreds or thousands of unread posts is discouraging.
Self-hosted, PHP, $30. Works on Desktop and has an iPhone skin as well.
I follow digg, techcrunch and mashable ... on twtter and get the links across these sites ranked for me.
BTW, disclaimer, I did write lynk.ly with a friend hence I also provided some of the alternatives.
Sign on up! We're close to alpha.
and please don't downvote, I'm being serious.
Also, if everyone just read HN where would the submissions come from?
The feature that I have been sort of daydreaming about is the ability to use your subscriptions to weight your search results so that sites you've subscribed to are ranked higher.
[1] http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=bnYqwjiA3RGJxTckBR...
My main beef, however, is less with the content of the feed per se and more with the fact that they are in a fixed order, so you lose the curation aspect of voting.
I'm also waiting for post to G+ from reader.
Read Later would also be very useful.
I find it really confusing that the "Share" link in Reader still goes to Buzz, which is sort of associated with my G+ profile but not quite, in that it doesn't seem that people who are in my circles are necessarily able to see them.
http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-overlo...
The next version will contain the possibility to include any rss feed and rank them to your personal needs. At the moment the first ten of your searches are used to boost articles if your are logged in.
Go to settings: http://www.google.com/reader/settings?display=edit-extras, click the "Send to" tab, click "Create a custom link" and add these strings:
Name ~ HackerNews
URL ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=${url}&t=${title}
Icon URL ~ http://ycombinator.com/images/y18.gifThe service is great, the web app is not.
Really? Usually in situations like that I either pull out my phone and use Reeder for iOS or visit the websites directly. Google Reeder's web client might as well not exist, it's just so bad. I'm actually kind of surprised there isn't a Google Reader web app replacement that is popular or well known. I would be interested in a "Reeder in the browser" solution like that occasionally.
I share stuff and discuss things with my colleagues on Reader. Somehow, they launched Google+ without any integration!
I assume the OP question was to establish whether one would use something else, and Plus integration would definitely affect my answer. If there was a tight integration (like, share to a particular circle) I would be less tempted to jump ship, but I have to say I am more wedded to Reader that any other Google product simply because by searching the "Shared" section I can find almost every single thing I have found interesting on the web [I share to one person only, either directly from the RSS feed or to Reader using Shareaholic].
Pro, versus normal webbrowsing: I don't end up doing the nervous-tic "reload to see if there's anything new on site A, then site B, then site C..." procrastination dance.
Cons, versus normal webbrowsing: 1) Everything gets put into a standardized layout, while I like the different kinds of design around the web, some of which aren't just aesthetic but include different paradigms (magazine-type versus forum-type versus link-sharing-type site layouts); 2) I end up feeling like I have this constant backlog of stuff to read, as if it were another email inbox, while it's easier to ignore old content when loading up a website.
My compromise is that for now I have only 4 blogs in my RSS feed, which update infrequently--- some of them not even more often than one post every 1-2 months. I have them there because they update infrequently enough that I'd forget to check, but I do want to see new posts when they arrive. Other sites I either check regularly in a browser, or I read whenever someone shares an interesting link to them, or whenever I remember, depending on the site.
I also have HN on maxvisit:20, minaway:300 and have blocked Reddit, BoingBoing and other skinner boxes on a router which I can't control.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
But now, Twitter has filled this hole for me - most every site or writer of significance has a Twitter feed, and it's easy to follow them. I don't feel obligated to read down this huge stack of accumulated posts, so there aren't any mental barriers to use it. In addition, you read the content on the site itself, in the format that it was meant for (or you add it to Instapaper). Twitter is sorta like RSS for normal humans.
As opposed to gmail, I could probably switch to something else if it had a half-way decent mobile version. Reeder isn't that essential to me.
I check HN first, my favorite blogs directly second, and the current forums I'm reading third. If I have more time to burn (rarely), I sign in to Reader. I liberally built up my RSS feed with lots of things, so it's great for skimming, but the signal:noise ratio isn't all that great. Hence, my fourth choice for getting some information/entertainment.
As I normally use net newswire and reeder, both tying into google reader, but I hate the web site interface.
You can also install this plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-homep...
Then you set feedly as your default tab open page. I see it everythere I do a Ctrl-T and because I quick-peek it many times a day, I can keep up with a large number of feeds.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/khbjahpecnkenngkid...
I am not surprised if you've had trouble with the Listen app, however. It's really languished. Podcasts seem to me one of the still killer content features of our smart phones, yet we're still waiting for a rev on this app. For a while I was reading that the dev team behind it was focusing on the next gen "Listen and Watch" app, but who knows where that is.
Love android, but some core apps are really half finished.
Many might be aghast at the humungous subscription set, but I do not do RSS like email -- it is more akin to a stream I surf, skim and dip. And it is lightning fast, permitting me to breeze through content in a rapid pace.
That said, I am astonished at how Google has allowed it to languish and stagnate, or by adding incomplete and inconsequential features.
* One of the big reasons I made the switch was the ability to search feeds, but sadly, of late, it looks like "search" (which I thought was the bread and butter Google raison d'être) functionality has deteriorated, not as robust or comprehensive as even a year ago or few months ago.
* No public API.
* Control to let me jump in at a given time point in the stream. Sometimes due to just mistakenly hitting a hotkey that refreshes and resets when I'm in the middle of a stream. Or it might be that I just want to jump to feeds earlier than 8 hours ago, 3 days ago, or 3 months ago.
Trying to avert the damage with instapaper and my Kindle.
Personally I use Akregator(http://userbase.kde.org/Akregator/fr)
What's so great about Reader?
Simple, free and open source: http://rsslounge.aditu.de/ Only catch is it requires your own host/webserver with PHP/SQL and a quick installation. But well worth it for me as I just dropped it onto one of my websites.
I avoid using Google products as much as I can. I still have a Gmail address that some people use, but it forwards to another address. I should probably set up an auto-reply to tell people to stop using it. I still have a site on App Engine that I need to migrate (will give me a good excuse to try Flask or Brubeck :-) The only Google product that I think I'm going to keep using is Youtube, because it has content I can't watch elsewhere.
Never use the web interface though.
When I set her up in Reader and she discovered the "Next Item" button, it changed her life. It was really pretty great to be able to help her like that and see her eyes light up.
Reader made me more intelligent.
Another feature is automatic translation, I follow a blog from Ukraine there.
The exact behavior was with several hundred unread posts in Reader with the oldest unread being 2-3 months old the oldest posts would slowly disappear. I know it was happening because they would be posts I wanted to read but didn't have time to so I would notice when they disappeared. It is possible they were still in Reader in a read state but I never bothered to check.
A better answer would be something like HN: isn't limited to certain sources, the best content floats to the top, and is in tune with the idiosyncrasies that set you apart from mainstream nonsense. [1]
[1] Oh look, I built just that http://zite.com :)
I also use fever, but that particular aspect of it doesn't seem to work for me -- so I just use it as a regular rss reader.
I was never a fan of the g.reader layout and toyed with a boxed layout on an igoogle page similar to what I have set up in my rnews system but it felt clunky.
Anyone who uses rss and hasn't messed with pipes is missing out on a whole heap of awesome.
i added twitter oauth support so that twitter streams look and update just like rss feeds (but with posting/replying support). i added voting so that there could be a frontpage full of popular stories, and a mobile version that looks decent on android/iphone.
but by then google reader had taken off and my few beta users had switched to that, so now i'm the only one still using it and the voting is useless. i'd probably just abandon it for something else but i haven't seen anything that integrates rss feeds, twitter, package tracking, and has a decent mobile interface. so for now it just remains a side project.
When they dropped Reader from the global nav. I was very upset, but was glad to see there was enough of a ruckus to get it put back.
I don't know that I would pay to keep Google from axing it, but I would consider it, and thats saying something.
BTW have you tried to enter the Konami code into Reader?
I can "mark all as read", of course, but I'd like to be able to eliminate items I can tell from the title are not of immediate interest.
like = +1 Share= Share on G+ Share w/ comment = Share with comment on G+
Are there any other features? related to G+ or otherwise?
My feed reading has changed drastically though. I used to subscribe to over 200 feeds, now I try to keep it under 20 (and not every feed has updates every day).
It's quite a bit better than the official app.
It's a great resource for filtering jobs from sites like craigslist.
That seems surprisingly high to me.