Google Reader is Gone

... and eWeek published an obituary with the provocative title "Google Reader Deserved to Die: 10 Reasons Why". One reason the author gives is that RSS use is fading. Setting aside the possibility that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, "the report of [RSS's] death was an exaggeration", the author's points generally fall into two categories. One consists of reasons why it was a good business decision from Google's perspective. Since providing the service cost money and it did not seem to generate any significant revenues, it's hard to argue with Google's logic - and rather than bash them for the decision, I'll just thank them for providing the service as long as they did.

The other set of arguments by the author seem to focus on the allegation that most users now get "news" from other sources, and reasons why that (alleged) trend exists and is likely to continue. This may or may not be true -- I'm no expert when it comes to how people get news online -- but the author seems to make the implicit assumption that news feeds are the primary (sole?) reason for using RSS. I use RSS almost exclusively to get "content" feeds: blog posts from non-news blogs; some Twitter feeds (for convenience); questions and answers posted to various non-news forums. I can't say what proportion of the use of Google Reader was from people seeking "news" and what proportion was from people, like me, looking for other content, but I suspect the presumption that it was mostly news gathering may be a reflection of the author's propensities rather than an analysis of usage data.

Related posts (some suggesting alternatives):

• The End is Nigh
• Impressions of Netvibes
• Farewell to Google Reader

The End is Nigh

We're about two days from the demise of Google Reader (which also means the loss of a go-to topic for blog posts). Here are some last minute links for anyone who has not switched yet:

• ReplaceReader.com has a Twitter poll listing various options. (Hat tip to The Endeavour for the link.) Be advised that some of the options in the poll are not really replacements for Reader (they're ancillary services and such), some are single-platform options that will not sync across devices (for instance, desktop only), and at least one requires that you run your own server.
• Google Reader: With the End Near, Here Are Some Alternatives is a recent (week-old) eWeek article that lists a few popular alternatives to Reader.

For what it's worth, I've been using the free version of Netvibes for a while. Netvibes is strictly browser-based, at least for the moment. The desktop version is quite good. On my Android tablet, the mobile version works, but it lacks some of the usability of the desktop version. That's to be expected, since the mobile version is presumably designed for use on a smart phone. My tablet has a 10" screen, though, and I want the missing features. The desktop version works tolerably well in the Chrome browser but does not display properly in Firefox, and there are quirks with scrolling and using certain links in Chrome. (I'm not sure if the quirks are the fault of the page design or something in Chrome.)

I've just started testing InoReader, the preferred choice of the author of the eWeek article. InoReader is also free and web-based. I like the interface, and the desktop version appears to work identically in the desktop and Android versions of Firefox, but there may be some quirks with it. Some posts are time-stamped incorrectly. More worrying, when I checked this morning I had 10 unread posts. When I checked back after lunch, there were only five, so some of the posts that I did not read either disappeared or were marked "read" (but not by me).

Update: I just discovered that one of the default settings in InoReader marks articles as read after you scroll past them. This, like "blow up building upon exit", strikes me as a setting that might possibly be useful but perhaps should not be the default. Barring evidence to the contrary, I'll assume that accounts for the "lost" posts. I also discovered that InoReader decided (again by default?) that I live in the Hawaiian time zone. (I wish!) We'll see if timestamps appear correctly now that I've disabused it of that idea. InoReader, by the way, has a truly impressive (if not dizzying) set of options that you can configure.

Update #2: InoReader is now my sole RSS reader, and I have no complaints at all. The one item on my wish list would be a mechanism to create RSS feeds on their servers to follow Twitter accounts. As mentioned in this post and this post, Twitter dropped support for RSS. Various third parties stepped in to provide free JSON-to-RSS bridges to follow Twitter accounts, but unfortunately they all seem to be getting slammed by use (despite Twitter's contention that RSS is "infrequently used today"). It would be nice if InoReader could provide a bridge of their own. Meanwhile, if you're still shopping for a GReader replacement, PCMag.com published an article "9 Great Google Reader Replacements" that might interest you.

Impressions of Netvibes

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my search for an alternative to Google Reader, which eventually led me to Netvibes. Having used it a fair bit, I think I'm ready to share my reactions.

Desktop

I'm very comfortable using Netvibes on my PC. My subscription is to the free service. There's a fee-based premium service that I think is targeted at commercial users, but the free version is fine for me. On the desktop, I use it in Firefox, but I tested it with Chrome and the interface unsurprisingly seems to be identical.

You can login the old fashioned way (email address and password) or via Facebook. I'd like to see a general OpenID login option, or at least buttons to log in through Google+ and/or Twitter, but that's a quibble. As with many browser-based applications, once logged in I stay logged in for extended periods, provided I load the page periodically. (I assume this is refreshing a cookie. Cookie-averse users may need to authenticate more regularly.) 

As I previously mentioned, import of my Google Reader feeds and folders was easy. I showed a couple of pictures of the interface in my previous post, so I won't repeat those. Here are some things I like about the desktop interface.

• You can show all new posts, posts from uncategorized feeds, posts from all feeds in a particular category, or posts from just one feed.
• You can show all posts (ones you've read using a "faded" font) or just new posts.
• You can read the post (or at least the initial portion of it, depending on the feed) inside Netvibes with a single click, or open the source document in a new browser window/tab with a single click. (The former marks the post as read, but the latter does not.)
• You can mark a single post or a subset of the displayed posts read by checking them off (one click per post) and then clicking a button (so n+1 clicks to mark n posts). You can also mark all displayed posts read with two clicks.
• Similarly, you can mark one, some or all posts as unread, with the same number of clicks. This is not something I do often, but occasionally I do mark a forum post unread so that I will come back to it.

Tablet

I also use Netvibes on a 10" Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) tablet. [Update: I've removed the previous link to information about Android 4.0, which was broken. If you're nostalgic for "Ice Cream Sandwich", you might want to have a look at this article from DailyWireless.] Netvibes currently does not have any native mobile applications, but for a tool designed to browse online posts, I'm quite happy to work within a web browser. On any mobile device, you point your browser at mobile.netvibes.com; the server detects your device type and apparently customizes the interface accordingly. The interface is almost the same as the desktop interface, so I'll just point out the differences.

• In the "reader view" (which is what I use exclusively; I can't recall if the "widget view" is available on the tablet), a menu of categories appears on the left and posts for the category you have selected appear on the right. The right-hand pane has a border at the top identifying the category. On the mobile version, this sometimes does not update when you switch categories: you see the posts for the new category but the header for the previous one. This is not exactly a high priority bug.
• As best I can tell, there is no option in the mobile interface to mark a post unread. This is problematic for me for two reasons. First, my hand-eye coordination being what it is, I sometimes tap the wrong subject line and read a post that I intended to leave for later. Second, when I'm screening posts from sources (weeding out what I consider to be the "chaff"), I may have to read a post to determine that it is in fact "wheat" (something I want to keep for later). Both the mobile and desktop versions provide a "Read later" category, and it is easy to add a post I've just read into that category. "Read later" is not the same as keeping the post unread in the original category, though. The original categorization is lost when the post goes into "Read later", and in any case "out of sight is out of mind".
• The option to select a subset of the displayed posts and mark them read does not seem to exist in the mobile version (at least on Android). I can mark all displayed posts read (two taps total), or read them one at a time (two taps per post). Again, when I'm looking at a forum, there are entire threads that I want to skip. On the mobile platform, that's 2n taps to get rid of n posts.
• There's a built-in menu to share a post. It has only three options: email, Facebook and Twitter. The desktop version has the same three options, but on the desktop I have no use for them, particularly as I never share anything to Facebook. On the desktop, it's one click to open the original source, then one click with the HootSuite hootlet to share to Twitter, one click of the Google+ bookmarklet to share to Google+, or two clicks to use the Firefox "email link" feature. Similarly, if I have Netvibes open in the default Android browser, it's one tap to load the original source document and then two taps to access the browser's sharing menu. That said, I have to give Netvibes a thumbs-up for the Twitter option on Android. Like other applications, if I select the Twitter option it gives me a choice of opening the tweet in any of the installed web browsers or in the HootSuite Android app (which I have installed). Unlike every other application I've used, where that last option silently fails, Netvibes really does open the tweet in HootSuite.

So, to summarize, I'm quite comfortable using Netvibes on the desktop and fairly comfortable using it on Android. I'd be quite happy on Android if they would add an unread option and a way to mark a selected subset of posts read.

Farewell to Google Reader

Google's announcement that it would be ending Google Reader service on July 1 caused considerable wailing and gnashing of teeth ... and that was just me. A lot of other folks are also inconvenienced, to put it mildly. I have no intention of slamming Google over the decision. They provided the service at no charge to me, and I'm grateful to have had the use of it. Now it's time to move on.

John D. Cook did a couple of blog posts about alternatives (see here and here), and there is no shortage of web pages devoted to the subject. I've spent more time than I care to think shopping for a solution. My requirements, in descending order of importance are as follows.

1. The reader must be accessible from both a web browser (on Linux, although that's unlikely to be an issue) or Linux desktop client (browser preferred) and an Android client (or browser application, but native client preferred).
2. The reader must synchronize between my Android tablet and my Linux PC.
3. I must be able to import my Google Reader subscriptions (preferably including the folders into which they are organized).
4. The reader should have straight-forward navigation, including the ability to flag articles as read. (I'm not worried about liking, +1-ing or other social features.)
5. There should be easy (one click) linking from the reader summary of an article to the source (original web page) in a browser.
6. I would rather not have a magazine-style interface. For me, it's just unnecessary clutter, and somewhat inappropriate. Some of my subscriptions are blogs, but I also use RSS to subscribe to forums and Twitter feeds, which just look dopey in a magazine layout.

It turns out that synchronization (my second priority) is an issue. Some alternatives currently sync very well, but they use Google's Reader back-end to do it. That leaves them scrambling to find alternatives by the end of June. Some do not sync at all, which is a deal-breaker for me. I'm busy enough that it's a bit of a struggle to keep up with the feeds to which I subscribe, and I really do not have time to spend flagging articles that I've already read on another device.

I thought that Dropbox might be an easy syncing solution. Brent Simmons, who I believe authored the NetNewsWire reader for Apple devices, argues in a blog post that syncing through a cloud file service like Dropbox is unlikely to work. So much for the easy way out.

Since Feedly grabbed far and away the lion's share of recommendations on several sites I checked, I tried that first. Importing my Google Reader subscriptions was trivial. The interface took a bit of getting used to, which is going to be an issue with any alternative to Google Reader. On the PC (in Firefox, using their extension), some articles were "featured" (displayed in larger boxes) than others. I found it easy to mark as read those that were not featured, but for the life of me I could not find an easy way to mark the featured ones read. It was either click on them and read them, or click on a different article to make it "featured" and then, with the original article no longer featured, mark it as read. That's a bit inefficient.

The Feedly Android client was actually a bit easier to navigate, once I learned that (a) swiping horizontally was the way to mark an article read or unread and (b) I needed to be very careful about not using too long a swipe. (A long swipe marks everything on screen read/unread.) Synchronization worked, although I found that I had to log out and log back in at least once on my desktop browser in order to catch changes from the Android client.

Unfortunately, one glitch in the Android application proved to be a deal-breaker. Tapping a link provided with each synopsis let me read the article in a browser, which was embedded in the Feedly client. In many cases, the article is a post on a forum, to which I want to respond. Finger-painting a response on an Android device is painful as it is. In at least a couple of cases, though, Feedly ate my response. After laboriously typing in the answer, I had to scroll up or down to access the button to submit the message. Feedly apparently interpreted the vertical swipe to mean "go back to the previous screen", losing my work in the process. I could not find a setting that would compel Feedly to send me to an external browser (either the default Android browser or Firefox) to read the full article, so that was the end of my Feedly trial.

I'm currently trying Netvibes. There is (as yet) no native Android application, so I access it via web browser on all devices. I can live with that. Synchronization seems to work (knock on virtual wood). Importing my Google Reader subscriptions (including folders), while not as easy as with Feedly, went fairly smoothly, although previous posts in some cases came in with very incorrect dates (as in, all posts from one source were dated seven minutes prior to import). I spent a bit of time marking things read, but that is a one-time phenomenon. The interface is quite clean. I find the "widgets view" more visually appealing but, for busy feeds, the "reader view" more functional.

Widgets View

Reader View

Update: After a week plus of use, I've posted my impressions of Netvibes.

Update #2: According to eWeek, Feedly has grabbed some 3 million Google Reader users (and counting) and is adding/improving features.

Update #3: I've now switched to Inoreader, mainly because I'm a bit more comfortable with it on mobile devices. After about a month of use, I'm quite happy with it.

Thanks a Bunch, Twitter!

At the INFORMS 2012 panel session on social media, I suggested that people interested in dipping a toe into the waters use Google Reader to watch RSS feeds of various things, including Twitter timelines. Ironically, a few days before the session (October 11 by my estimation), Twitter made API changes that broke existing RSS feeds. The feeds I was watching in Google Reader all stopped updating at the same time (last visible entries dated October 10).

Twitter unveiled their new API in September and, among other things, dropped support for RSS. RSS feeds are still available on an interim basis, but apparently they'll be gone for good as of March 5, 2013. Hopefully Google will come up with a workaround for Google Reader by then.

In the meantime, if you want to read tweets in Google Reader, you need to reload your Twitter RSS feeds. After a lengthy web search, I found a tip on this thread that, combined with something I picked up on another site (which one I no longer remember), seems to work.

I'm assuming you already have a Google account and use Google Reader. Open a new browser tab and paste the following verbatim in the URL bar:

http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss%3Fscreen_name%3D

Don't hit Enter yet; we're not quite done. Append the screen name of the Twitter account you want to follow in Reader. For instance, to follow me (and, trust me, I do not recommend this), add parubin after %3D. Now hit Enter. If you're lucky, you'll be told that you Reader found the feed and be given an opportunity to subscribe to it.

Here's where it gets tricky. The screen name is case-sensitive; but sometimes the correct case does not work, and you have to experiment with intentional errors. (No, I'm not making that up.) I just tried to subscribe to my own feed (against my own advice above) using

http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss%3Fscreen_name%3Dparubin

and was told my feed does not exist (news to me!). So I repeated it with

http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss%3Fscreen_name%3DParubin

(note the incorrect capitalization of the "P") and was rewarded with the option to subscribe. In another case, I tried to repair my subscription to the feed for @ThisIsTrue. Note the camel case. Appending ThisIsTrue after %3D failed, but appending ThisisTrue (incorrect lower case on the second "i") succeeded. I'm skipping over a few unsuccessful attempts. Finding the correct single letter to muff is a trial-and-error process, happily not needed in all cases, sadly needed occasionally.