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.

No More Twitter RSS Feeds

I like to aggregate most of the social media content that I want to see (blog posts, forum posts, certain Twitter timelines) in one place. Before its announced (and impending) demise, that was Google Reader. Of late it has been Netvibes. The key is that, in both places, I obtain content via RSS feeds. I have a separate Twitter client, but prefer that a few "important" Twitter feeds be included in my RSS reader. The reason is that I regularly check the RSS reader for new content, but I check the Twitter client extremely sporadically. (If anyone needs proof that I'm not a teenager, the preceding sentence should suffice.)

Much of the world, myself included, subscribes to the mantra that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Unfortunately, software developers have a different mantra: "if it ain't broke, it needs more features". Throw in possibly some concerns over security and/or a desire to assert more control, and you arrive at Twitter's recent decision to do away with RSS feeds. They retired version 1.0 of their API and replaced it with version 1.1, which supports JSON only (no XML, no RSS, no anything else). Quoting their developer site:

Consequently, we've decided to discontinue support for XML, Atom, and RSS, which are infrequently used today.

If you're curious about the definition of "infrequently used", I suggest you monitor Twitter, tech forums and the blogosphere for the ensuing howls of outrage by those of us "infrequent users" whose feeds are now broken.

If you have a web site (for instance, a blog) on which you provide users an RSS feed to your Twitter account, you will need to replace that. If your site contains a widget displaying recent posts from your Twitter account, and if it used XML or RSS, it will be frozen in time (or broken) until you replace it with a newer widget. If, like me, you used RSS feeds to read other accounts, you will also need to find an alternative.

Netvibes recommends installing the updated version of their Twitter widget, but that's not an option I fancy. The Twitter widget is apparently a full-fledged Twitter client embedded in the Netvibes dashboard, and the last thing I need is another Twitter client to ignore (see first paragraph). Happily, there is at least one other option available: the aptly named Twitter RSS site. (Hat tip to Social Media Slant, which is where I found out about the site.) Twitter RSS, which is apparently not a site owned by Twitter, is a free service that is extremely simple to use. Type in the Twitter handle (minus the "@" symbol) for the account you want to follow, and they will supply you with a URL that provides an RSS feed for that account.

So I've replaced my original Twitter RSS links in Netvibes with links provided by Twitter RSS, and now I just need to sit down and catch up on my reading. (It took me a few days to get around to addressing the problem, and you know how fast stuff piles up on Twitter.) I have no idea who is behind Twitter RSS, how long they will be around, or how long it will take the "infrequent users" of RSS to overwhelm their servers, but for now we at least have an option.

Update: The Twitter RSS web site is gone -- the domain name lease seems to have expired. I've found another possible solution, described here.

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.