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Google: "Eh, we're kind of over this Reader thing. Let's go launch some balloons."
AOL: "Why, thanks guys -- don't mind if we do!"
The above mentioned quotes are still unofficial, mind you, but it appears that AOL (disclaimer: that's Engadget's parent company) is joining Feedly and Digg in an effort to capture the audiences who will soon be forced to flee from Google's Reader product. AOL Reader launched today in beta form, promising to collect "all your favorite websites, in one place." It appears that the design language follows that introduced in the entity's Alto mail product, and if you've forgotten your AOL password, fret not -- those who request (and receive) an invite will be able to sign in via Facebook, Google or Twitter. Oh, and judging by the shot above, it's designed to work universally across screen sizes and devices, including your tablets, phones, desktops, laptops and space-age computational creations. Of note, it appears that the sign-up forms aren't entirely active just yet, as we're hearing that the bona fide launch won't occur until next week.
Update: We've confirmed that invites will be accepted starting on Monday, June 24th.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Source: AOL Reader (1), (2)
The eventual demise of Google Reader gave existing services like Feedly an opportunity to land hundreds of thousands of new users, but the sudden gain of popularity demands an infrastructure that can handle the load. By opening its APIs to the masses today, Feedly says it's officially making the transition "from a product to a platform," supplying developers and RSS users alike with a painless migration path from Google's soon-to-be deceased reader. To go along with that, the company also announced a novel version of Feedly on the web, one which doesn't require any extensions or plugins and is accessible via browsers such as Internet Explorer and Opera.
As the image above shows, the freshly minted cloud platform already offers support for a slew of third-party applications, and Feedly says numerous other devs are currently working on their own for the near future. Now, if you didn't think Mountain View's recent spring cleaning could have a huge influence in such a short span of time, hear this: Feedly's touting that its user base has more than tripled since the announcement, making the jump from 4 to 12 million through the end of last month. Only time will tell if Feedly ends up being a worthy Reader replacement, so perhaps now would be the perfect instance to start deciding whether or not this will be the proper solution to all your RSS needs.
Source: Feedly
Digg -- yes, that Digg -- has a replacement in the works for Google Reader, and it looks like it'll arrive just ahead of the final days of Google's RSS aggregation service. The service, which uses the same API as Reader, is planning a public beta starting on June 26th; a "friends and family" beta will open this Wednesday, the 19th, with limited access.
During beta, the Digg RSS reader is free. In a survey Digg published last month on its blog, however, the company found that over 40 percent of respondents are "willing to pay for a Google Reader replacement." The company noted alongside the finding that, "Free products on the Internet don't have a great track record. They tend to disappear, leaving users in a lurch. We need to build a product that people can rely on and trust will always be there for them. We're not sure how pricing might work, but we do know that we'd like our users to be our customers, not our product."
That said, Digg's latest blog post seemingly assuages our worry. "We mentioned in a prior post that Digg Reader will ultimately be a 'freemium' product," the post reads. "But we're not going to bait-and-switch. All of the features introduced next week, as well as many others yet to come, will be part of the free experience." Those features include the standard RSS reader experience, "easy migration and onboarding from Google Reader," "useful mobile apps that sync with the web experience" (there's an iOS one pictured, and Android is promised in the 60 days post-launch) and "support for ... subscribing, sharing, saving and organizing."
Filed under: Internet, Software
Source: Digg Blog
If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week, the Lumia 925 touched down in Germany, a popular RSS client for Android broke free of its Google Reader shackles and BBM Channels received some sorely needed features. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that's happening in the mobile world for this week of June 10th, 2013.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
I’ve been using Google Reader for about eight years, if memory serves me well. The service has never been perfect, but it allowed me to skim and read thousands of articles everyday for my job. It’s something that can become quite unmanageable if you don’t keep up to date with them every day. Just like many users, I was pretty shocked when Google announced that it was sunsetting the service. It had become a central part of the way that I read many articles, and I had trouble thinking of another way being able to accomplish the same thing.
In the last few years, I had noticed that performance had become an issue for Google Reader. Many times, it made my Firefox browser crash, repeatedly. Nevertheless, none of the other services of this kind accomplished its goal so effectively. Recently, about two years ago when I got an iPad, I started using Flipboard to access my feeds. I was able to cut down the time it took to read my feeds significantly, and Flipboard rarely crashed. The problem I have experienced with Flipboard is that it has trouble fetching large amounts of articles, let’s say 1,000+. I’d have to repeatedly fetch them a few times to get them all. Even then, I might miss a few.
Google Reader will shut down on July 1st, 2013. As such, I checked out a number of RSS reader alternatives. Naturally, I was procrastinating – it’s something that I do quite well. However, when I checked out Feedly, I was pleasantly surprised. It was quite fast, migration was seamless and there were a lot of nice, new features that made perusing feeds a lot better.
The day that Google announced that they were shutting down Google Reader, I opened a Feedly account. I didn’t really use it much until this week. I made the switch over from Google Reader to Feedly this week, using the mobile iOS and Android apps (there’s also a robust browser-based version).
I noticed a few kinks, which will probably get addressed pretty soon, since Feedly’s dev team is frequently releasing updates. For example, when I’m looking through my feeds, from the welcome screen, or I look through the All tab, the app doesn’t mark these as read (This can be easily fixed by checking the Auto Mark Read option in the Advanced Settings tab). Also, whenever I move away from the app in Android, Feedly refreshes and boots me away from my current position, which is annoying. But otherwise, Feedly rocks. It’s really fast, the card view is what I prefer, but you can have different list views to quickly skim many articles on one page, which is easy to do on a large screen like many of the new Android phones.
So if you have been procrastinating, don’t do it anymore. In order to migrate painlessly from Google Reader to Feedly, just log into your Google Account on Feedly and it will do it for you. No fuss, no muss, it’s just very simple. After July 1st, it’s probably going to be more complicated, like exporting your data from Google Reader through Google Takeout and importing that file.
Now that Feedly has taken in more than 500,000 Google Reader refugees, it's unveiled a community-driven feature roadmap that'll guide it for the rest of the year. Sitting atop the list is speed, which the team says will be boosted by fresh hardware and the help of new hires. Windows 8 and Windows Phone support, access to Feedly via the web without a plugin, searching within a user's feeds and refined group sharing are coming down the pipeline as well. Naturally, a raft of bug fixes round out the planned updates. The outfit also revealed that Reeder, Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader will sport Feedly integration before Mountain View's service retires on July 1st. Word of Google Reader's demise may have caused anguish, but it looks like suitable alternatives are beginning to flourish.
Source: Feedly
The phaseout of Google Reader is quickly becoming a boon for developers still carrying the torch for newsreader apps -- just ask Feedly, which now says it took on 3 million new users in the two weeks since Google's decision. Rather than simply wait for more customers to roll in on their own, though, the company is taking matters into its own hands with a major refresh of Feedly Mobile for Android and iOS. The update brings a reworked search engine that's both extra-quick and makes topic suggestions based on the collective subscriptions of the Feedly user base, getting better as more readers join the ranks. Other updates also serve those who want to keep things moving quickly. A new Must Reads section prioritizes feeds, a title-only view maximizes screen space and an updated sharing panel both allows a customizable shortcut as well as (slightly ironic) sharing to Google+. Once you've gotten over the sting of another Google spring cleaning, Feedly's potential solutions await at the source links.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile
Source: App Store, Google Play, Feedly
It looks like Feedly's promises of a "seamless transition" worked. The newsfeed service recently reported that more than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined its ranks following the announcement that the popular aggregator will close this summer. It multiplied its bandwidth ten times over, added new servers to cope with the sudden influx and hopes to keep the service up as much as possible as more users pour in. In an effort to keep its new clientele happy, Feedly has promised to listen to suggestions and add new features on a weekly basis as well. But if it doesn't, don't worry; we suspect there'll be many more alternatives pitching for your RSS feeds over the coming weeks.
Via: SlashGear
Source: Feedly Blog
Pope Who?
White smoke over the Vatican doesn't stand a chance as a trending topic next to the black cloud over one of Google's most beloved products. Google Reader has landed on the company's sunset list, and will wink out of existence on July 1. Problem is, Reader is not as widely beloved as its most fervid users assume. And speaking of trending topics, the extinction of Reader signifies the mainstream rejection of RSS as a hands-on tool for organizing a living library of real-time information flow. It has been eclipsed by social content discovery. As Brian Alvey, chief scientist of Ceros and creator of Blogsmith (Engadget's publishing platform) noted, "Dear RSS: @Twitter won."
More broadly speaking, Reader's ultimate fail is the latest major rebalancing of the internet's legacy symmetry of "push" and "pull."
Filed under: Internet