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Google Reader gone

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wraith808:
Well played, and valid point :)

johnk:
Someone else tried that... and posted the results here somewhere, I think...
-wraith808 (June 24, 2013, 01:31 PM)
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The only reference I could find to it was this post. And this was all that was said about TinyTiny RSS:
I concluded in an earlier post that hosting your own reader was the only rational solution. But although I have tried my best to like both Tiny Tiny RSS and Fever, neither gives me everything I want.
I ruled out TTRSS quickly. It just seemed a bit clunky to me...

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Does that constitute an actual try I wonder? ;D
-40hz (June 24, 2013, 02:15 PM)
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Okay, admittedly that was an unhelpful summary of my experience. To elaborate slightly: although TT-RSS has been around a long time, it still feels a bit beta-ish to me. The interface is not slick, but it does work. It is slow and clunky in use compared to others I have used (and I have used many in the last couple of months). For example, TT-RSS refreshes and reloads were very slow compared to Fever, which I was self-hosting at the same time on the same server.

Fever, was better in almost all respects. Easier to install (much easier), and an elegant interface that is a pleasure to use, and far quicker in use. I only ruled out Fever because the basic UI design is not as good in practice as a more traditional three-column interface, if you read large volumes of material on a daily basis. That's the only area where TT-RSS was better. But overall, if you want a basic three-column web-based RSS reader, in my opinion Feedbin is far better than TT-RSS.

I hope that's more helpful.

40hz:
I hope that's more helpful.
-johnk (June 24, 2013, 03:15 PM)
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Quite a bit & thx! ;D From your initial remark I thought that maybe you had merely given it a quick glance and decided it wasn't the ticket.

Actually, it's not the web interface I'm that interested in. What I really want is something that will take a large and regularly updated feed list and cache it locally on my personal network and make it available to all the machines connected to it.

The problem with things like Fever isn't so much what they don't do as it is what they try to do. I have zero use for 'social' anything. And I have no patience with things that try to make guesses about what I want or need to see. Maybe that's more because I've developed a rapid skimming technique perfectly suited to my personal requirements so I don't need an app to "help" me with that part.

 8)

johnk:
The problem with things like Fever isn't so much what they don't do as it is what they try to do. I have zero use for 'social' anything.
-40hz (June 24, 2013, 05:02 PM)
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I think I mentioned this before: although the Fever web site concentrates heavily on its "Sparks" feature (the ranking system it uses for "hot" stories), it is very easy to ignore this feature. If you don't put any feeds in the Sparks category, Fever behaves like any other RSS reader -- it's just folders and feeds. Self-hosted options are limited, so if you think the interface would suit you, it's worth a try. Keyboard navigation works well. The only problem is that there is no trial version.

IainB:
I was just reviewing some old RSS feeds via AOL Reader (which I am trialling), when I spotted this bloggerindraft blogpost from November 2011:
Blogger’s Brand New Google+ Page
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
Earlier this week, the Google+ team launched Pages, a new way for you to keep up-to-date with your interests and build relationships with the people who share them. Today, the Blogger team is launching our own Google+ Page, and we’d like to invite you to add us to one of your circles.

By adding Blogger's Page in one of your circles, you'll start seeing updates from the Blogger team in your Google+ stream. You’ll also have the opportunity to engage with other bloggers by writing comments on the posts. Here's a quick list of what to expect:
•Product news and announcements
•Video Hangouts with the Blogger team
•Spotlights on Blogger users and their blogs
•Pro tips from the Blogger team and other users

Lastly, be sure to mention +Blogger when you share your own tips -- if we come across something particularly helpful, we may reshare it. See you on Google+! Posted by Lisa Ding, Community Manager
Posted 10th November 2011 by A Googler

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[rant]
The thing is, I and probably tens of thousands of other people never wanted Google's "exciting" stupid and pointless-for-users proprietary Google+ in the first place, and resented their puerile attempts to coerce us to use it as our "social notworking tool of choice", to make the coffee or whatever, and to read all of our newsfeeds -  rather than using Google Reader for RSS (as we currently do).

So what did Google do? Well, apparently, one of the clever things they have done is to take away Google Reader - thus making one less reason for not using Google+. Smart, eh? I presume this could make some kind of sense if you were absolutely desperate to create/force more eyeballs onto the proprietary Google+ feeds, if only to avoid the marketer's nightmare of a Second Wave, which could permanently tsunami your career prospects at Google.
So, if you wanted some real reasons (as opposed to all the stupid fibs and prevarication) for killing off Google Reader, then one could probably be that it had to be sacrificed at the alter of Google+ - a cuckoo project that probably "cannot" (i.e., must not) fail.

The histories of IT organisations are littered with the corpses of such "cannot fail" projects, and their inventors. The deciding factor is not how strongly some idiot executive insists - beyond all reason - that the experiment must work, but when business reality takes over and someone sane counts the costs and cost-benefits, and then pulls the plug.
Here is a picture of an approach recommended by the NZ SSC (State Services Commission) for scrutinising and aborting runaway cost projects.
(Notional project cost curve showing funding, and termination points when accepted costs are exceeded.)


[/rant]

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