Google Reader - Mini-Review

[IainB]

I have started trialling feedly as an alternative to GR. It looks quite hopeful, but isn't yet in a form that suits my needs. They at least seem to understand about GR users, and they also seem to get the point about some GR users like me who need to quickly and discerningly scan through a large volume of feeds and make selections on the fly and view and speed-read those items selected - first as a snippet/preview, and then in full if of interest:

Extract from Tips for Google Reader users migrating to feedly
...Tip #0: Importing your Google Reader account
To import your google reader feeds and categories over to feedly, simply login to your feedly using your google account. Feedly will automatically sync your Google Reader account with feedly.

Tip #1: A more condensed view
A lot of Google Reader users use their reader as a research/curation tool and need to be able to crunch through a lot of articles very fast. When you are in a feed or category page, you can click on the gear icon and select the Titles view to get a denser text only experience. If you want assign the titles view to all your feeds and categories, there is a global knob in the preference page...

[cyberdiva]

I went to TheOldReader site, but I could find no way to join except to sign in using Facebook or Google accounts.  I have no desire to use either.  Is there a way to create a login independent of Facebook and Google?

[J-Mac]

Iain, I did that last night - wasn’t too sure if it would work or not. I guessed on the .xml file, since it is the closest thing I could find to an OPML file. However I had over 4,000 ahead of me!

Thank you.

Jim

Oh crap - TheOldReader totally sucks! Now it tells me I have no subscriptions imported. Just this afternoon I had a little over 4,000 still ahead of me in their "queue". Note on my Home page says "Bad news, some queue positions got messed up again. We fixed the issue, and we hope this was the last time it happened."

So it appears they lost my import. I am done there. They don’t seem to have any clue as to what to do. I would question the reliability of such a program.

Jim

[J-Mac]

Now it changed again.... but not for the better. It appears that they found my import file, but.... I now have 38,901 ahead of me. So somehow about 34,000 jumped the line! I tried to cancel but it won't let me while awaiting the import.

Jim

[Josh]

J-Mac, I think the best thing to do with ANY of these services is to wait it out. The Google Reader demise has caught MANY of these services off-guard. I tried importing into newsblur and it took me two days to get a successful import. After that, I found the site used a bit of custom code that resulted in huge slowdowns on my work networks, hence, it is out of the question. I think most of these issues will settle down once the influx of new customers settles at each site.

[J-Mac]

Yeah, I know. But since I still have the last version of Feeddemon Pro I can use that. It will still update all feeds, it just won't be able to sync with any online service (like Google Reader) anymore.

Thanks!

Jim

[wraith808]

Another alternative if you're looking for something desktop oriented - Readefine.  It looks like it has potential- but I'm not looking for a desktop alternative.

[katykaty]

I know this is digging up an old thread, but things have been happening since the last activity.

Specifically, Feedly have opened up their API, so Beyondpod can act as a Feedly client. So once again I have free choice over which app on which device I can read an article. 

[IainB]

Thanks for spotting that. That could be quite useful to know. I had pretty much given up on Feedly.