Thursday 14 March 2013

I'm scared, Dave.

Google Reader is part of my external brain.

Anything I want to be able to find sometime later, I star. Searching my starred items almost always brings up whatever it was I needed. When I find useful stuff on economics blogs for my courses, I tag them with the appropriate course code; when updating the syllabus and notes before the start of semester, I flip through all the tagged items and make the appropriate adjustments.

I'm scared, Google.

I am willing to pay for a web-based (or cross-platform) RSS reader that will import all my starred and tagged items; hopefully, the market will provide. If one doesn't emerge...

 

11 comments:

  1. I agree - Google Reader is probably my top productivity tool. Luckily I use it more as an inbox and I clear things when they're done (mostly), so I don't have a big starred catalogue to address. Still, looking around at other services today, they're all less useful (but I imagine Google did crowd out competitors, so new services should emerge in the next few months).

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  2. Sadly I fear the 'market response' to the end of Google Reader will see web sites drop or downgrade feeds.



    And I've already paid for a Windows Phone 8 app that pulls data from Google Reader onto my phone. I suspect I won't get a refund now the service is withdrawn.

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  3. To ease your pain: Geek knowledge - why HAL sings "Daisy".

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  4. The best feature it had was killed last year. I loved being able to follow a dozen other infovores without having to pretend like I knew them in real life. I followed shared items from people around the world. Google reader is still a decent RSS, but it's not what it once was.

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  5. Lifehacker has a bunch of alternatives here: http://lifehacker.com/5990456/google-reader-is-getting-shut-down-here-are-the-best-alternatives

    I'm scared too.

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  6. Hey Eric. Partly as a bit of rigour, and as an way to keep my information backlog straight, I've started to clip articles to evernote, instead of relying on Reader to maintain that information for me. I've only been doing it for a few months, and didn't go back in my Reader archives very far, but it allows me to tag, annotate and fiddle with the items I clip. It's a nice alternative. I plan to couple it with whatever feed aggregator tool I move to. I agree with Bill Bennett that without a big RSS standard bearer that many sites will begin to drop the service.

    It's also interesting that the response last night (past ~5:30 MDT) was that all listed (on Cnet, Ars Technica, Lifehacker) alternatives to Reader became unavailable within 2 hours as people panicked and went looking for alternatives. Puts paid to Google's assertion that it's not a viable product.

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  7. Feedly.com are offering to provide a seamless switch over to their system. They currently provide a wrapper to Google's feed and say that they will keep all your settings and stars from 1st July onwards.

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  8. Agree. Used that a lot. And, I'd also used sharing as a way of saving.

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  9. I couldn't watch the 2001 clip all the way to that part. Too sad for Hal.


    Hadn't known the back story though, thanks!

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  10. Cool. Will give it a month and then decide where to land. Bit nervous about places that only promise to match stars after Reader's gone.

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  11. I need to start making better use of evernote.

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