In about 3 weeks Google is pulling the plug on Google Reader. For those of you who don’t what Google reader is, you’ve been missing out. What Reader does is take content that I have subscribed to by RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and collects it all in one place. No more bouncing from site to site to see if there is anything new. And, I can organize it in a very personalized way. But wait, there’s more. Subscribing is super easy. All I had to do was click on the icons that you see in this post. See why it was called Really Simple?
I started the search for a Google Reader replacement as soon as I saw the announcement a couple of months ago. I wanted to start weaning myself while there was still plenty of time left. I have narrowed down my search to two contenders. Both are ok, but not great. I can’t really blame them for not being perfect. They were as blindsided by Google’s announcement as everyone else and they have been trying to play catch-up as millions of users have been searching for a replacement feed reader.
Who are the top contenders in my mind? Newsblur and Feedly. Both of them seamlessly transferred my feeds from Google Reader and retained my organizational structure. They both have done a credible job of duplicating the look that I was used to. Unsurprisingly, however, they both have their own quirks.
NewsBlur. Let me say up front that while I am fine critiquing the app, I am also cutting the developer a lot of slack. He was completely blindsided by the announcement and had no time to prepare. His server crashed within hours as tons of people went over to check out NewsBlur. To his credit, he got it back up and running in a matter of minutes.
In general, I am pretty happy with the Android app. My biggest complaints are with the web interface. I find it hard to navigate and even harder to do without a mouse. I had gotten very used to navigating my way through Google Reader with only the keyboard. It has been a difficult adjustment.
My biggest beef with NewsBlur is the difficulty I have getting to it mark content that I have scanned as “read.” This matters a lot because I have it set so I only see unread content. Otherwise navigation is a nightmare.
Feedly. In general, I am happier with Feedly overall. I am really fond of the web interface and I absolutely love that it lets me resort unread material by oldest to newest, not just the other way around. That really helps when I need to get caught-up.
What frustrated me about Feedly is the Android app. It doesn’t as well with my tablet as NewsBlur does. It has a tendency to crash at least twice a day.
In an ideal world, I would be able to read Feedly online and NewsBlur on my tablet and they would stay in sync with each other. But, this is anything but an ideal world. So, I toggle between two less than perfect solutions watching them both as they add features and make tweaks on existing ones.