Baby steps toward replacing Google Reader | Hacker News Reader

Baby steps toward replacing Google Reader

marco.org

277 pointsmh_61 comments

Personally, this could be a killer use of App.net. Blend social with RSS and get something like Pandora for newsfeeds. Not sure how hard it would be to pull an RSS feed and then push that into an App.net stream, blended with some meta data on content and a machine learning algorithm which enhanced your feeds by finding similar feeds that has a high correlative match to what you read most. Just sayin'

What's the maximum payload size on App.net? Last time I went looking all I learned was that it's larger than Twitter's.

256 chars of message, but things can be attached to the message in addition to that. See http://developers.app.net/docs/resources/post/ and http://developers.app.net/docs/meta/annotations/

Disclaimer: I'm a cofounder at Intigi.

With https://intigi.com, we've done just this, intake content from both social (Twitter) and RSS feeds. With Twitter, we index the full text of any linked article and make the text fully searchable. The full text provides much more data for us to search and also is a great way of deduplicating content (i.e., Tweets linking to the same article).

> Blend social with RSS and get something like Pandora for newsfeeds.

You might like Prismatic: http://getprismatic.com/news/home

Nope, the demanded permissions are way out of control:

* View basic information about your account

* Manage your data in Google Reader

* View your email address

* Manage your contacts

* Perform these operations when I'm not using the application

I've seen a lot of suggestions for replacements (either already out there or just an idea) since yesterday which want to blend social networks with RSS and personally it seems like a terrible idea[1]. I can't be alone in just wanting a news feed and not some mashup of the news and what's being talked about.

[1] - I realise the irony in complaining about not wanting social news yet still following personal blogs, but they're a known quantity. If I want socially filtered news I'll go browse Reddit.

I think you could do something really interesting simply by connecting feed usage data and content data, which (I believe) was zarify's idea of 'Pandora for newsfeeds'.

There are companies along this line[1], but I'd prefer a solution with just rss usage/content data, and not the social streams as well.

[1] Prismatic and Percolate come to mind

No damn it. This is exactly why Google is closing down Reader. Most people who have stuck with Reader do not want anything to do with mixing RSS and social crap.

With the App.net storage API, you could just use it for sync'ing. It'd be up to the individual apps what features they extend (push it to your stream, make an RSS stream that others can follow, etc). In theory, it should be possible to partition the space for users who want them separate.

> This is exactly why Google is closing down Reader.

The large number of vocal people complaining specifically about how much worse Google+ is than the old reader sharing system (search for "sharebros" or http://www.buzzfeed.com/robf4/googles-lost-social-network) would suggest this is not true.

With the exception of hardcore introverts, most people like the idea of sharing - but only when it's actually doing something they like rather than the gamified meaningless actions Google is chasing right now.

I'm not against sharing. What I hate is when sharing turns into blasting everything I do out to the world without my consent each time. I don't want people to know every song I listen to, every news article I read, or every HN post I open. If this makes me introverted, then I don't want to be cool and hip.

See the recent stories about LinkedIn blasting out stuff to every contact in an address book or the historical fubars of Facebook changing defaults on the fly.

> If this makes me introverted, then I don't want to be cool and hip.

It just means you want good social software rather than things designed for advertisers. The original Google Reader sharing model was exactly what you describe: use it in private until you choose to share something.

can rss feeds be added to Google+ ?

Since it would have been the right want to migrate Reader, I'm assuming they view this as a competitive disadvantage - probably because they're trying to push content providers to maintain a G+ presence.

Interesting mix.

So my thought was not 'sharing' in the sense of having your friends know you just read an article on TechCrunch, rather that you and your friends characterize the TechCrunch feed as '"news", "gossip", "opinion" => related to (startups)' so that when I or they start reading other things that are 'related to (startups)' the reader could mention or perhaps occasionally inject articles into that 'feed/grouping' (Pandora has the notion of a 'radio station' which is similar).

Basically the extent of your "sharing" with the rest of the community (with respect to the reader) is that you think agree that TechCrunch is about startups. The community helps create the taxonomy of the feeds they are reading so that the reader can know if some feed that one person is reading might be of interest to someone who is reading feeds that are similar to that. (with no knowledge about who is reading those other feeds, just that the the other person has the same sort of interests you have expressed for a feed)

I'm going to assume the app adds on to every article the familar /tweet/share/like/etc tags so if you are a social media engaged person you can push it out to your social media stream as well.

Even though I am "stuck in the 70's" in my music tastes according to my wife I enjoy the music Pandora finds for me on my originally 'bands from the 70's' radio station.

The only thing reader seemed to be missing for me was a way to discover new blogs to follow. That function is being provided a bit by HN these days but its hit or miss.

I'm working on an opensource implementation of the API here if anyone is interested in helping out :) https://github.com/devongovett/reader

The most important thing right now is probably making sure that there is a documentation of the old API we all agree on. The one you are using [1] seems like a good start.

[1] http://undoc.in

Did I miss something in their API, or was there absolutely no way to tell whether you had renamed a feed or not?

FYI: http://undoc.in/subscription.html#edit

I might pitch in and help on this, I know I'll be looking for a replacement to Reader, might as well help build an api implementation

All I know is that I will be on whatever reeder supports. So basically whoever makes that thing is going to be deciding my fate. I hope they choose wisely.

Bingo. This is what's up for grabs - who wants to be the underlying infrastructure for all these great apps like Reeder or RiverOfNews Note: most folks are opting for Twitter/FB + Flipboard-style apps, so most of the market will be the privacy oriented elite.

Feedly's first out of the gate already here.

The current version of Reeder supports Fever. It took me about ten minutes to setup Fever (you need a MySQL instance, but thats about it). I use Bluehost for my hosting and setting up Fever was pretty painless.

It does cost $30, but it is worth it for me.

Also, an implementation independent test suite would be nice...

I'm sure there are plenty of corner cases where all the new implementations might fall down, or make different decisions than are expected.

Marco should write it.

why?

I'm the project lead for Vienna, the open source RSS client for the Mac. We support Google Reader, and we want to support this:

https://github.com/ViennaRSS/vienna-rss/issues/160

If you're a Cocoa developer, feel free to jump right in. If you're going to implement the server side, shoot me a note @mstroeck (app.net preferred).

I tried Vienna today -- downloaded, installed, then tapped OK on the "Google Sync" option…

…an hour later, the application still was "not responding", though the little red number circle on the dock icon continued to climb. About a half hour later with the application still in a "not responding" state, I force quit and then proceeded to delete it.

Perhaps you're not a very technical person then. Or you have some bizarro ideas about testing new apps.

If an app is "not responding" after one hour, and it's not doing physics simulation or renders a 3D movie for Pixar, then you kill it and try again. Damn, I wouldn't even let it stay stalled for 10 minutes.

If you genuinely want to test the app (instead of only being interested in Google Sync), you'd also try how it does some other stuff, like adding some RSS feeds directly.

That's a good idea but I nevertheless think big clients (client reader + integrated access to server api) will win anyway because if you have to pay a client and then pay a subscription to a server to have access to an implementation of this API I don't think it will be very appealing. All the current model of 'small' clients was based on the fact that the access to Google's (non official) api was free. That part won't be replaced.

It would be nice if one of the self-hosted server-side apps (Fever, Tiny Tiny RSS) replicated the Reader API. It's not really worth it for me to bother with a self-hosted solution if I have to use a web client.

I just wrote something similar on an another site:

"For now, Google Reader was the standard. Now that it isn't it anymore, I hope that it will get developed a nice API to sync feeds between decides, and that the major reader will implement it. This way every application would be able to sync with every backend, without any problem. And if a backend close, you could easily switch to a different one by changing one line in the configuration."

I seriously hope that this will be true. What has got me stuck on Google Reader for now (beside the "it just works" interface) is that every major application synced with it. I don't really want this to happen again, only with a different company.

OAuth rather than POST. I don't want a bunch of client apps storing passwords in plain text.

Here a link to Mr Avocado? He the former engineer who created Google reader project in the first place.This is Just a suggestion from a user. Maybe getting him on board would help a lot in your project?

http://www.massless.org/?area=Projects

Please, as an advice to general HN posters, please avoid posting marco.org links here on HN, because his sole intention is to sell his readers out more than focusing on writing. That's a fairly grande accusation, but it's justified.

Do you know why is he writing about Google Reader now? Go to your HN homepage right now, as of writing this comment, the Google reader announcement has about 1700 upvotes. Ouch, that's a lot of views for someone to let go of. Hence, if someone writes something that compliments this announcement, common sense tells me that they would get more page views.

There's nothing wrong in having ads on your blog/website, people do it all the time. What's wrong is trying to create an impression to your readers that your sole intention is to write quality content, while you care just about pageviews. Please, realize that marco.org is no different from Techcrunch!

Marco isn't innocent, if you've been following him closely. Also, I think it would help if you take a look at this page where he just blatantly sells us, his readers like some piece of junk commodity. http://www.marco.org/sponsorship

Ok, so he responds to HN posts all the time. Everything he says here is a good idea. And I want all the reader developers to consider it. So I'm going to upvote it.

Just because he says what we want to hear doesn't make the content wrong. I want to hear it and I want others to hear it too.

If what he is recommending isn't perfect, the comments here can expand and fix it.

I've been under the impression that HN doesn't sit well with Marco. I've read it multiple times on multiple occasions.

Quickest example I could recall: https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/176437401156194305

either factually wrong or completely irrelevant

Coming from Marco Arment that is rich.

Got a link to share with us?

It would be a boring diversion, but his most recent hysterics about Google and WebM are the height of obnoxious defensiveness: Google pays $100 million for a widely respected and legally clear video codec company, open sourcing the crown jewels for anyone's use. To Arment's jaded, bitter, anti-any-competitor-to-Apple perspective this is "a clear pattern: Google clearly (and often willfully) infringes on someone else’s IP, can’t believe that it’ll ever have any repercussions, and claims they’re doing it to be “open” or some bullshit. It betrays a culture at Google’s highest levels of arrogance, entitlement, and dishonesty."

This is a pattern of hilariously biased perspective that he demonstrates time and time again, while occasionally trying to pretend that he's even keeled.

Just incredible.

It is not terribly surprisingly that Arment shields himself from dissent, and tries to build a world where alternative opinions can only be wrong.

EDIT: Marco is funnelling his minions in here (because he totally doesn't read this place, am I right?), so expect moderation to reflect that.

Besides the style of what corresation wrote, it would be a really good idea to answer why you think he is completely off. Because to me, who doesn't know Marco Arment at all, he sounds kinda spot on. And he did indeed write what corresatiion quoted [1]. So in case he is completely nuts, just downvoting this makes it seem that Marco is indeed "funneling his minions in here" to the casual observer.

[1] http://www.marco.org/2013/03/09/google-webm-infringement

He's far from the only one. Most people with thousands of followers monetize them, one way or another. There's a ton of bloggers out there hungry for pageviews.

So what ? Why accuse him right now, out of the blue ? And what does that have to do with the post ?

Are you crying foul on a writer trying to make money for his writing? Do you cry foul on magazines, newspapers, etc. for selling ads? Ever notice how "the news" in general is about what's going on in the world currently?

I saw 1 ad. 1. And he's not selling user information but ad space and sponsored link posts which doesn't flood his site.

What exactly are you protesting against?

At some level, that's exactly how every ad-funded site in the world works. Is your complaint simply that the process is more visible? Marco.org and a few other independent sites use advertising that basically follows the "buy a slot" model that's been with us for more than a century. Is there an argument here as to why you would single out this ad-supported source versus every other such submission? I'll observe that there's nothing in the HN guidelines on- or off- topic about ad-funded sources.

In this case, you don't seem to have a critique of the content, the only area that the HN guidelines discuss. AFAICT, the content submitted is 1) original and 2) apparently quite relevant to the HN readership given the level of voted interest in this and other submissions related to the Google Reader shutdown.

So he's basically our slave and writes more content on whatever we like? Awesome. If he wasn't already getting paid, I'd say let's hire him.

Are you completely stupid or are you just trolling us?

On the off chance you're just stupid, here's some enlightenment. Marco Arment is a cofounder of hugely successful Tumblr and creator of Instapaper, both of which certainly make or made him more money than he'll ever make from ads on his blog, however popular. He's also created The Magazine, which probably makes a fair bit of cash already, and will be making more in the future. He has a solid reputation in the tech space, and it is stupid to argue that he's somehow spending his days trying to bait HN with empty crap articles.

marco.org is very different from TC, in that if marco.org had no ads, Marco would certainly still write to it, as it's his personal platform, whereas if TC had no ads, it would fold in a week.

Marco Arment is a cofounder of hugely successful Tumblr and creator of Instapaper, both of which certainly make or made him more money than he'll ever make from ads on his blog, however popular.

The GP post should be nuked from orbit, but the reasoning you put there is hilariously specious. If it is so irrelevant, then why are they there? Why does Arment stuff entries full of credibility-diminishing "sponsored by" text, or worse insidious Amazon affiliate links?

Every ounce of reality says that he cares very much about his blog income, your imaginings of his external wealth notwithstanding.

He can make something in the thousands of dollars a month of income from his blog. That's pretty good, and it probably pays for quite a few monthly expenses, so he'd be stupid not to put this one nonintrusive ad on there.

Not putting a small ad on there that pays thousands of dollars would just be silly.

As a comparison, swombat.com has no ads because the amount of money attached to it would simply be too small to bother (tens of dollars a month at the very most, if that much). If it was a few thousand, I'd put a small ad on there even if I had millions in the bank.

Pretty sure it's a troll. He knows he can get a response out of Arment (http://www.marco.org/2013/03/14/davidpayne) just as another commenter on the Verge did a while ago from a huge personal attack (http://www.marco.org/2012/05/10/crazy-comment)

The irony for me is that I had no idea Marco had ads on his site, because I get to read his blog content in Google Reader!

You would still get ads there.

In the form of periodically-interspersed sponsor posts which are explicitly stated as being such and which are never mixed with actual content. As feed monetization goes, its about as above board as it can get.

Of course, being as above board as possible would still not be good enough for the anti-Marco brigade stomping around this pale imitation of what HN once was. I certainly wasn't here right from the beginning, so no hipster douchbaggery intended by any stretch, but I swear to those who have arrived more recently: You have no idea how good HN used to be compared to this. Sad, truly sad.

What anti-Marco brigade? A heavily downvoted post and me pointing out that you would in fact get ads if you subscribed to his site via a feed reader? Dude has like half his posts hit the top here, HN loves him. A very, very tiny minority don't.

But yes, I like nostalgia too.

Nope.

Twist: Marco actually posted this, so he could have an excuse to write another ad-revenue-generating post for HN.

http://www.marco.org/2013/03/14/davidpayne

I hate to be rude, but you haters are some amazing douchebags. I'm not a Marco fanboy, but he's a successful person who thinks a lot about the things he does, as evidenced by any listening to Build and Analyze and Accidental Tech Podcast. Do I always agree with him? No. Is he smarter than me, and has he accomplished more in terms of his career and technology? Yes, I'd say the evidence says so.

It's one thing to disagree with people, but to hate them and be a total jackass for no reason is just wasting your life on the internet. MANY web sites have sponsorship. MANY of them. Marco is no more of a sellout or in the business of selling you out than any of them.

What a tool.

I enjoy his writing, but I don't take his writing as gospel. As with anything anyone says, we should exercise some judgement on the validity and biases of their ideas.

In 2011 in Marco's podcast he stated that 7" tablet devices don't make any sense, but then in 2012 he had changed his mind when the iPad mini was approaching its announcement. I am not calling him a liar, but just pointing out that opinions change and... opinions are just opinions.

I share his concern that each new feed reading service will use a different sync API, and am happy others will be reading this blog post. Regardless of whether Marco has jumped on the popular story bandwagon or not so he can make a few advertising dollars, this post is of value to enough people to up-vote it.

Volvo or Volkswagen?

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