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.

The Death of a Reader

I began reading EVE blogs the day after I made the move from Blackberry to iPhone. I did not make the jump to iPhone as a leap onto any bandwagon. I like living in rural areas, I made the move from one rural area where Sprint had the best service to another rural area where AT&T had the only service. I like fancy toys and Blackberry seemed to be on the decline, iPhone it is! I have stuck with the iPhone for much the opposite reasons I like PCs over Mac products. With the PC you have a higher degree of customization available to you and because of that and the performance options that brings more games are developed for it. (That and its probably cheaper to develop for the PC) I do not need that same level of customization in my phone. I need one that works well, has enough "options" that I can do neat things with it in the few minutes I have to spare. That and I have purchased a few apps I don't want to have to repurchase. :)
The Capsuleer App was published and still active the day I made the switch so I grabbed it from the App Store. Prior to the iPhone and Capsuleer all of my EVE reading came from the various Wiki sites. I found this really cool little section of Capsuleer that had an RSS reader and began reading EVE blogs.
It wasn't long before Capsuleer development stopped and I started looking for another way to get to the EVE blogs. A bit of Googling brought me to the famous EVE Blog Pack link. I googled again for a decent iPhone app to read the feed, down loaded FeedlerRSS and resumed my reading of Internet Spaceships on the go.
As the blog pack changed and I followed links from listed blogs to non listed blogs my reading list grew and grew. Every few months I would log into my Google account and trim the dead branches of my reading list. Some of the blogs on my list I read as they were posted and some I would save for when I had enough time to read several posts, there are a few good reads that benefit from serial reading, Tiger Ears being one of them.
As my life has grown busier and busier over the last few years the ease of use and functionality of the Google Reader account has kept me connected to the game I had little time for with little to no effort. I was saddened the day I read the big G was discontinuing their service. I did a bit of checking around and found that several different groups were heading up efforts in developing a replacement for the service. By this time I had begun actively playing the EVE again and spare time was valuable, any time not spent with Family or Work was spent playing EVE. My confidence in someone coming up with a service that was as easy to use as Reader coupled with my lack of time has left me in a sort of rut. I did not start Feedly before the end of Reader and missed importing my lists. I have also not been able to find another service that is as simple as Reader was. As a consequence my reading has dropped off considerably, I have down loaded a few blog reading apps and will continue to search for an easy to use service.
There may well be an easy to use service that I have missed with my casual search of options, hopefully this weekend (mine are 1 day weekends) will lend enough time to play some EVE, find a good RSS service and get it linked to an App on my iPhone.