Google Reader - Not for Inactive Readers

[Paul Keith]

Maybe it's common knowledge for people who use their Google Reader often but I was disappointed today when I finally thought of catching up with my feeds using Feed Demon 3.0 only to find out:

We only calculate unread counts for items less than 30 days old, or
the last 10,000 items, whichever comes first. So if you've waited long
enough that your unread items were older than 30 days, or had 10,000
new items show up since then, we won't consider those older items when
figuring out unread items. They will still be there, but we won't show
them as unread. This is standard behavior in Reader - if you want to
save items for a longer period of time, we still recommend tagging or
starring them.

This doesn't apply in my case, although my problem is almost
identical.  I use FeedDemon, which syncs to Google Reader.  I had 542
unread items.  Once I initiated the sync with Google Reader, Google
Reader marked all but three of them as read.  These were all items
from within the last three days, and less than 10,000 items, but for
some reason Google Reader thinks unread posts are actually read when
you sync to it from an external client.

I guess it sucks for me that the FeedDemon folks are shutting off
Newsgator as their sync source, because so far this migration to
Google is not pleasant in the least.

http://groups.google...13ca2200409db0?pli=1

Sadly RSS Readers are dying left and right that I don't know of any offline RSS reader with non-Google Reader sync.

Personally I prefer these kinds of quirks to be in Big Bold Letters whenever I join a service but... the majority has spoken.

Note: Brief + Xmarks work but I worry that my Firefox will slow down as I recently encountered. (Not sure if it was the fault of my Live Bookmarks though.)

[Babis]

So Paul, its actually a complaint for a feature not a review?

[Paul Keith]

It's both. I was actually wondering whether I should put it in the Complaints section or the review section.

I settled for the mini-review section because for most people, the title itself is as clear cut a review as you would need.

It's like if a certain browser doesn't contain add-ons. For many people, that in itself is the review.

In fact, it's inaccurate to even say it's a complaint for a feature at this point.

Google Reader is so entrenched in online RSS reading that making a full blown review would be near pointless.

Users already know what Google Reader is and people looking for a specific online RSS Reader would head to Google Reader first because the rest of the competition has died out.

[Babis]

I agree with you. I a way it is strange that there is no competition at all for Google Reader. But since the ex off-line readers (now almost all dead) were unpopular now we rely on (the superior) Google Reader, which definitely has some flaws, however it makes the reading of most blogs much better than visiting the blog itself.

[Paul Keith]

@Babis, actually there were many competitors for Google Reader early on.

None of them made enough of a profit. The fall of Newshutch was the turning point IMO.

After that, other services fell down. The only ones who survived the online downshift of RSS Reader popularity are Netvibes (but they're not a full RSS Reader service) and Feedly who mimic a popular dead service who's name I forgot but instead of using their own service, used Google Reader.

The rest became pretty much for pay or too complicated or stagnant.

[Paul Keith]

Related article for those interested in the problem:

http://www.copyblogg....com/rss-mainstream/