Saturday, June 29, 2013

Reader Replacement Smackdown

 


For those of you new to my blog, welcome! For those of you who stop by with some regularity, thank you!

I have done a bit of upkeep on my blog. Translation: I started writing a post and two hours later it was midnight and I had revamped the blog. THAT kind of upkeep.

We all know by now the sad, sad tale of Google Reader's death march into cyberoblivion this weekend. I, for one, will be sorry to see it go. I used Reader specifically for my genealogy blog reading and always appreciated its simple structure: read, click, read, click. I don't want fancy, just show me the blogs.

I have tried two replacements: Feedly and NewsBlur.

Feedly seems to be the reigning king of Reader replacements. It was very easy to add my Reader feed into Feedly. I like it well enough...except the mobile version. Again, as I am really only using it for blogs, I want to zip through some reading on my phone or tablet when I have a few minutes. I haven't gotten used to the "magazine" format of Feedly mobile. I just want a list!

NewsBlur is very cool. And apparently fed by hand. I signed up a couple of weeks ago, and it took nearly 48 hours for my account to be available. Earlier this week it was still over 12 hours behind gathering feeds. I follow about 50 blogs, and many don't even post very often, so the speed is a concern. (The free NewsBlur version has a 64 blog ceiling, too). I'm suspecting the designer is literally hand-feeding the blogs into the feed. I do LOVE the layout - like Reader plus geeky stats - and the NewsBlur mobile version is much more appealing to me. I will keep them both for now, but the jury is still out.

As for the blog, I added some pages at the top to collect badges and society links, and create a link through directly to my genealogy database. I tried to streamline the sidebar and make it more blog-centric. I added the Feedly follow button so give it a try. If it doesn't work, PLEASE let me know!

Thanks for visiting, and I hope to find you and even more readers after Monday!

Do you have a replacement Reader? What are your opinions on the ones you discovered?

© 2013 Sally Knudsen