Monday, August 12, 2013

The New Reader - The Old Reader

This post is not at all related to EVE other than I use these services to read EVE blogs. :)

I dislike change. I especially dislike change for the sake of change. I understand in theory the reasons behind Google discontinuing the Reader service. It seems to me that there would have been some way that the absolute geniuses behind Google could have bent the service to their advantage. I guess this would be an example of one of the reasons I am not the leader of a F500 company. :) All said and done for me "the end user" it just felt like change for the sake of change. I do not care that they apologized in advance.
When Reader died I downloaded a few other apps. I had until that time been using Feeddler RSS for iOS and had it logging into my google account for feed reading. I gave a few of them a go and either did not like or did not have the time to give many of the services a good chance. I also failed massively and did not use them to log into Google  in the weeks before it died, I understand the change in service would have went seamlessly in that case.
Of all of them I think I appreciated Feedly's style and polish the most. Feedly also looks really good on the iPad. I must have failed at something because I just did not take to the actual service as well as some people have. I finally settled for importing my Google Take-Out into The Old Reader and and going back to Feeddler RSS to log in to that service. Feeddler for me has a comfortable feel to it. I can mindlessly thumb through posts without having to think about what does what. Now if only Feeddler would update their interface to something a little fresher :)
Why is this important? I have limited time, I do all of my reading on mobile devices, either the iPhone when 100% mobile or the iPad Mini when I am partially mobile. I do not have the time at the desk to keep up on my reading. I do not have the time at home to sit at the PC and keep up with my reading. I would much rather undock and shoot somebody in the face or get shot. I carry my three digital age mandated devices with me where ever I go. I have the phone always in a pocket. I have the iPad in the front pouch of my laptop bag and of course the laptop for when I am at the one of 3 desks I use that does not have a computer already at it or I have to do more than a few sentences of typing and am not at the desk. Typing for an older guy really sucks without a keyboard.

At any rate I would highly recommend The Old Reader and Feeddler RSS to any who have a fair amount of blogs to keep up with.

3 comments:

  1. Hrmm, The Old Reader is still working for you? It was practically hacking up a lung with the Google Reader influx, to the point that they turned off new user registration and told people they were going to make it a private service.

    http://blog.theoldreader.com/post/56798895350/desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures

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  2. Of course, I had that page bookmarked and didn't go look to see if they had followed up on the closure. They changed their mind. However, I already moved to Feedly after their "get lost new users" message of a couple weeks back.

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  3. I just did not develop a feel Feedly. I may give it a go again when I have more time to play around with it. The Old Reader works, it seems to lag on feeds at times. The Old Reader has a vested interest in becoming a solid solution for RSS feeds, maybe they will improve the speed of their systems.

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