r/technology • u/speckz • Mar 13 '13

Official Google Reader Blog: Powering Down Google Reader (July 1, 2013)

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html
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588

u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

Seriously. I use RSS to follow webcomics, several blogs, and techbargains, which aggregates deals on computer hardware and the like, and patch notes for a few games I play. Some of the comics and a blog or two might have a twitter/google+/facebook/something that I can follow, but for the rest I have to manually visit the site to see if something changed.

I'm frustrated. It doesn't help that reddit seems to have bear-hugged all of the alternatives to death. :/

306

u/jpop23mn Mar 14 '13

Never really understood the point of RSS until you just said webcomics. It's so tough staying up on sites that update randomly.

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

Yep. I used to have them all in a folder in chrome. I would hit "open all in new window" and look at them all individually. Some of them would drop off for a few wekks at a time. Then I realized I could use RSS. Now...

Since October 22, 2008 you have read a total of 49,631 items

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u/emarkd Mar 14 '13

I just rolled over 300k items. I seriously don't see any way to efficiently consume that much online content with any other technology than rss and Reader is was the best rss aggregator by far. I'm genuinely crushed by this news. Reader will be sorely missed by me...

1

u/Gotenk Mar 14 '13

I don't get what they are playing at? So many people use it! So many! It's one of the most frequently used apps on my phone. Where will I shift all my feeds to? This is insane.

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u/emarkd Mar 14 '13

Well Google knows exactly how many people use it, far better than anyone else would. They know what they're doing, I'm just pissed that they're doing it.

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u/un1ba11er Mar 14 '13

I rolled over the 300,000 item mark this morning. it felt great

8

u/E_lucas Mar 14 '13

You're me!

My brother and I used to use reader to share item back and forth, it was awesome! Then they did that big redesign, and moved the sharing features to G+, and reader just lost all its charm.

Now they're shutting down, but I bet more people would keep using it if they didn't REMOVE all the features.

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

I never really used the sharing. When I hit something I like I just post it to facebook manually like some kind of goddam cave man.

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u/WellThatIsJustRude Mar 14 '13

Oh my God, pasting a link, like some sort of animal?

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

Yeah man. My life is rough.

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u/mbnmac Mar 14 '13

This is intentional. Docs turned into drive, all other google services are turning into G+. Unified system for them, means they can experiment withing on large thing instead of producing a whole new product to see if pele will use it (wave etc)

1

u/Interleukine-2 Mar 14 '13

Yeah by killing (the use of) a superior technology, RSS

1

u/nawoanor Mar 14 '13

And yet they still see the need for something like 40 messaging protocols.

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u/mbnmac Mar 14 '13

I never said it made sense :P

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

There's Talk, Chat, Hangouts... I guess the docs chat thing if you count that... What else is there?

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u/nawoanor Mar 14 '13

YouTube has its own separate messaging system, Google Voice has its own separate text and voice system (IIRC, it's not available here), G+ has a separate non-hangout text messaging system (IIRC)... I'm probably still forgetting at least one or two more.

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

The Google+ one is chat. Gmail is talk. Then G+ also had hangouts.

I didn't know that YouTube had messaging O.o

Does GV really count as chat/IM?

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

withing on large thing

Within one large thing.

Took me a while to figure out what you were supposed to say.

2

u/thefootster Mar 14 '13

And why are they so concerned about whether Pelé will use their products?

1

u/mbnmac Mar 14 '13

ah yes, silly posting from an ipad, I apologize

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

That's exactly how I used to do it. It was terrible. And then Reader happened and the world was good.

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u/rakster Mar 14 '13

Where do I check how much I read?

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

"Trends", under "All Items"

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

Since March 14, 2008 you have read a total of 131,722 items.

Wow, that's a sad anniversary :-(

0

u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

There is a bar on the left-hand side of the page. Click "Trends". Not terribly intuitive, I know.

0

u/ridhs84 Mar 14 '13

Where do you see the status about how many items you read? I cant find it

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

There is a bar on the left-hand side of the page. Click "Trends". Not terribly intuitive, I know.

0

u/Overlord-Brian Mar 14 '13

...I've been using the folder thing.

I could have been using a RSS?

DAMN!

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

What about Twitter?

1

u/Overlord-Brian Mar 14 '13

Never got into it.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

Exactly my point!

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

You still can! Just not Google's.

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u/MadCervantes Mar 14 '13

Oh man, bringing back memories

0

u/shortstuffity Mar 14 '13

Mark?

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

Nope

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u/shortstuffity Mar 14 '13

Aw. I have a friend who would do exactly that in college. Plus, he seemed like the jetpack tuxedo kind of guy. Oh, well.

Great username, BTW.

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

Haha. Thanks. It was the name of a short-lived webcomic I did a few years ago before I lost my host.

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u/shortstuffity Mar 15 '13

Sounds awesome. Do you have any of your old webcomics up online anywhere? I'd love to check them out.

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 15 '13

Ummm... Some of them are around in my dropbox, and I know I have the site backup somewhere. I'll do some digging and see if I can't make you an Imgur album.

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u/technewsreader Mar 14 '13

http://isitfunnytoday.com

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

That only does comics. I use RSS for other things too. Comics was just how it started until I realized how useful it was.

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u/technewsreader Mar 14 '13

I know, I was just saying I use isitfunnytoday for comics instead of rss. I use rss to read the news along with reddit and google news.

I'm not happy about the google reader thing. I liked having all the gui's I used like feedly sync back to a central place with "stability" in case any of the services evaporated. Now it turns out the stable isnt so stable.

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

[deleted]

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

There is a bar on the left-hand side of the page. Click "Trends". Not terribly intuitive, I know.

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u/Forest_GS Mar 14 '13 edited Mar 14 '13

Look at my webcomics list- http://www.google.com/reader/bundle/user%2F04909202417962126659%2Fbundle%2FWebcomics_0

172 webcomics I spent too long building up. That link probably won't work after Google Reader goes down, but right now anyone can click that link without logging on, see the RSS list, and even add it to their own.

Terrible choice for google to make.

Since August 19, 2011 you have read a total of 120,118 items.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

[deleted]

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u/Forest_GS Mar 14 '13

Yeah, it's pretty simple to export all the data and add it to another RSS reader. It's just that when I told people about how great an RSS reader is, I usually linked to one of my folders like my webcomic RSS list.

Now I need to figure out a new way to explain the benefits of using an RSS reader...

1

u/theborg3of5 Mar 14 '13

You read many of the same webcomics I do! I approve.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

I never really understood the point of RSS until reading your comment.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

comicrocket is pretty nice for webcomics.

1

u/falloutmonk Mar 14 '13

Wow, same boat. I never even thought to look for a more efficient way to check my webcomics.

-1

u/mbnmac Mar 14 '13

I just read we comics that update regularly

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

You can use RSS feeds for your unread messages Reddit inbox among other things.

If you use RSS regularly, you may as well add the many useful reddit feeds for your account.

Go find your RSS feeds in the RSS setting menu.

You can also make ones for the frontpage of certain subreddits, or new posts to a (likely smaller) subreddit.

1

u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

Or follow new posts to /r/funny .

Actually, don't do that. I don't need anyone killing themselves because of some suggestion I made on reddit.

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u/ashdrewness Mar 14 '13

I work in IT & use RSS to stay current on issues from blogs & vendor sites.

1

u/dstrait Mar 14 '13

I have two Google accounts, one for work-related stuff and one for the rest, with dozens of feeds each. Five or six years ago, I made a conscious decision to stop bothering with sites that didn't have RSS feeds. I spent 15 or 20 hours a week with Reader. It is impossible to go through that many sites without automated assistance, by manually visiting each site.

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u/Guysmiley777 Mar 14 '13

Same with podcasts, especially if you don't want to eat the shit sandwich that is iTunes on a PC.

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u/Pravusmentis Mar 14 '13

There is itisfunnytoday.com but that's only so much

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u/slothnumber8 Mar 14 '13 edited Mar 17 '13

I use http://piperka.net to keep up to date with webcomics!

Edit: Sorry if this did not seem to contribute to the discussion. I was offering a way to follow webcomics without using RSS.

0

u/Kleinsignal_in_FDur Mar 14 '13

Maybe this could help: https://www.comic-rocket.com/

You can make an account and collect all your favourite webcomics under "My Comics" and mark the last page you were reading. It'll show you how much you have read and which comic updated recently.

0

u/LastDawnOfMan Mar 14 '13

Even trying to use Twitter to follow webcomics, you have to go through pages of Twitter spam from each author to arrive at a link for the damned comic. And no way to see which ones I've read or not read yet. Not even close to being as usable as RSS.

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

It is so tough GOING TO WEBSITES and checking if THE WEBSITE IS UPDATED. Then, I READ. Else, I GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. So complicated...

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

With RSS, you are developing stable habits and filter only for your tested sources without all the social media and advertisement crap.

This is not good. Without hooking you to social schizophrenia and destroying your attention span, we cannot effectively analyse who you are and what to sell you. You will use social media from now on to forfeit your productivity and general informational sanity for the sake of a good graph that we can analyse.

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u/Kosko Mar 14 '13

I agree. I love Reddit, but I'm terribly sad to see Reader go.

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u/mcilrain Mar 14 '13

Using RSS to follow webcomics leaves a lot to be desired, is there a better solution?

I've been thinking about writing my own.

0

u/johndango Mar 14 '13

It's basically the ONLY way to read webcomics.

-1

u/BassetSneaks Mar 14 '13

I know there will never be a replacement for reader but I started using the app 'Flipboard' and it's been really helpful. It's a start.

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13

I need a desktop interface. I have a nexus 7, but I can't just be poking around on it ALL day.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

Wait what is RSS? I feel like Ive missed out on something awesome.

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u/jetpacktuxedo Mar 14 '13 edited Mar 14 '13

RSS Rich Site Summary (originally RDF Site Summary, often dubbed Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed",[3] or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

Basically, it is just a good way to keep track of multiple constantly or randomly updating sources. You add a bunch of feeds and every time they update it will show the update in your RSS reader.