There's more than a few enterprises that have an eye on filling the void in the RSS market left by Google's curious withdrawal. Digg is one of those hoping to woo Mountain View's refugees and has updated its iOS app to incorporate its experimental new service, which offers direct imports from Google Reader. It's available from the App Store right now, but we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that there are other, ahem, AOL-sanctioned, alternatives.
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Wondering how AOL's RSS client will rank as a Google Reader replacement? Today's the day we find out, as the doors to the AOL Reader beta have officially swung open. Feedly's been absorbing Google's castaways for weeks now, and Digg's is only two days away from launching its own freemium RSS client -- but we couldn't resist getting an early taste of what our parent company (Disclaimer alert!) is cooking. Join us after the break for all the details about this latest entrant in the field of feed readers.
AOL Reader hands-on
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If you're a fan of AOL's Alto email client, you'll be pleased to know that AOL Reader shares the same basic design language. That may seem minor, but UI consistency between services is a major plus, especially since many of the newcomers don't have a core branding to hang their RSS hats from. The web app's layout is pretty simple, with categories, tags and sources on the left, and headlines on the right. When you first fire up AOL Reader on the desktop, that right-most pane is populated with the 10 most active feeds in your collection. Of course, you can always switch from the standard list view to a more Now-like card view or a three-panel display that puts actual article text in a right-hand pane while continuing to display headlines in the middle. Unfortunately, even in three-panel mode, AOL's reader makes pretty poor used of your screen real estate. There's loads of unnecessary padding all over the place and there's no getting rid of the giant, empty gray column on the right. To make matters worse, UI elements shift around as you change layouts, which leaves you hunting for the view button after you've decided the three-panel layout is too cramped.
Sitting atop all this is a straightforward navigation bar, packed with a web search widget and links to AOL Mail, On and Homepage. The most important feature, however, is the ability to quickly import your Google Reader subscriptions with just two clicks... provided you've already exported you data from Reader, unzipped the archive and located your subscriptions.xml file. Even then you'll have to hope that AOL Reader is actually willing to import your feeds. A number of people on the Engadget staff have yet to successfully get the fledgling service to recognize their XML files. At the moment, even adding individual feeds manually occasionally caused the web app to hang. We'll cut it some slack since we're still looking at a beta release, and chalk up some of the issues up to being overwhelmed with traffic, but the inability to actually subscribe to anything might permanently turn off some visitors, even if the problems are only temporary.
While dedicated apps aren't available yet, the AOL Reader site does come in a mobile-friendly flavor. (AOL tells us that dedicated apps are coming soon, likewise with further integration of third-party services.) The web app works fairly well, propagating across the Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices with nary a rendering glitch in sight. It doesn't hurt that the phone interface borrows heavily from the current crop of native apps out there, with a menu that pops out of the left side and a minimal header populated with only the most basic controls. There's even a fancy floating tool bar in the article view that lets you quickly jump one post back or ahead, and star something for later.
While the interface might seem barren at times, all the most essential features are present. There's a pretty basic feed discovery tool that lets you browse topics or search by keyword and a host of Google Reader-esque keyboard shortcuts, which should have most of you RSS addicts dancing for joy. You can also make your own basic tweaks, like displaying an unread count next to a source, hiding empty feeds and changing the font size. If you're not a fan of the blocky blue and gray default theme, you can change it under settings to a lighter, still-blocky white and gray option. You can also star articles in case you want to read them later.
While we appreciate its clean and simple design, we did encounter some performance issues. More often than not navigating the interface was swift, but it did hang up occasionally, especially when trying to load heavily populated feeds (say, 100 stories or more). Honestly, we think that Feedly has a slight advantage in the speed department, which is somewhat troublesome considering it has loads of features missing from Reader and a much more robust UI.
AOL's (seemingly opportunistic) RSS reader clearly isn't quite ready for prime time and, as it stands, doesn't bring much to the table in the way of unique features. Though, the development team notes that having resources from content creators is something that they're confident will set it apart from the pack. After a few hours of getting familiar with AOL reader, we're not quite enthused enough to switch over from Feedly (and, honestly, we'd much rather Google Reader be granted a stay of execution), but AOL Reader shows some promise. Of all the services vying for title of King of the RSS Hill, AOL's is one of the most unabashed in its aping of Google's soon to be shuttered platform -- and that's not a bad thing. The folks at Mountain View struck pretty much all the right notes when creating Reader, now AOL is simply trying picking up the pieces. That is, if its servers can handle the load.
Sean Buckley, Mat Smith and Terrence O'Brien contributed to this report.
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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.
when.eng("eng.perm.init")Feedly Cloud is Now Available to All Users
Seneca once said, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
When Google decided to put Reader out to pasture, feedly was given a tremendous opportunity. But it is also an opportunity we have been planning for some time.
Following up on our original post on our Normandy initiative, as well as the June 30 blog post on our new functionality and design partners, today we are pleased to share more good news with the feedly community.
As of today, feedly cloud is now live, providing a fast and scalable infrastructure that serves as the backbone to feedly, as well as a number of connected applications. Feedly cloud is open today to all users visiting http://feedly.com, providing a simple oneclick migration path from Google Reader. And thanks to the great developer community that has gathered around it, providing multiple safe and sound alternatives to Google Reader. With the release of feedly cloud, feedly today transitions from a product to a platform.
We are also today delivering a new, completely stand-alone Web version of feedly.
A fast and scalable infrastructure Feedly cloud is currently processing over 25 million feeds everyday, crunching through billions of articles. We built it to scale, and it is amazingly fast.
A pure web interfaceFeedly cloud also powers a brand new, standalone Web version of feedly (no plugins or extensions needed), making feedly available from any browser, including Opera and
Internet Explorer. This was one of the most requested features, and we are thrilled to
deliver on this today.
Awesome apps
The feedly cloud has an open API which allows third party developers to design and implement great content centric applications that will enhance the feedly experience.
Over 200 developers have contacted us to get access to the feedly API, and many are currently working on building innovative reading experiences. Today we are announcing the first feedly cloud applications:
? Sprout Social
? Nextgen Reader
? Press
? gReader
? Newsify gNewsReader for BlackBerry 10 and for Symbian/MeeGo
? Pure News Widget
Over the coming weeks and months we look forward to adding more names to this list. There are only 10 more days before Google Reader is going away. Built on a fast and scalable infrastructure, powering a great collection of apps, and now complete with a pure web interface, feedly cloud is the best replacement to the Google Reader infrastructure.
Let's all wish Google Reader a happy retirement!
Head to http://feedly.com and migrate your Google Reader to feedly cloud in one click.
Still bummed about the fact that Google is killing its RSS feed service, Google Reader, on July 1? Us too.
But there are other ways to read the headlines from your favorite websites. We've covered a bunch of Google Reader replacements — including Feedly, which now says it has gained 3 million new users since the Google Reader shutdown was announced in March.
But none of those replacements have quite the pizzazz of StarRSS, a feed reader based on the opening crawl from every Star Wars movie. With John Williams' famous music blaring in the background, even the most mundane of headlines looks exciting. (Unless it's a headline about a taxation dispute involving the Trade Federation, that is.)
For example, to see what Mashable's RSS feed looks like in Star Wars format, click here. Click on any headline as it blasts past into space to go straight to that story. (And replace the Mashable part of the URL to make any other site's feed look Star Wars-y.)
StarRSS is the brainchild of a user at the online open source software collective GitHub known only as fotcorn. It's a simple piece of JavaScript code using assets supplied by another GitHub user, Artem Avetisyan.
We doubt those materials are open source, exactly — as the Register recently pointed out, the majority of stuff on GitHub is released without regard to license. So enjoy the power of this fully operational RSS reader while it lasts.
Image courtesy of fotcorn
Topics: Dev & Design, Tech if(window.pageChanged) window.omni({"channel":"tech","content_type":"article","top_channel":"tech","content_source_type":"Internal","content_source_name":"Internal","author_name":"Chris Taylor","age":"0","pub_day":19,"pub_month":4,"pub_year":2013,"pub_date":"04/19/2013","isPostView":true,"post_lead_type":"BC Video Lead"}); metaData = {"link":[["canonical","http://mashable.com/2013/04/18/star-wars-rss-feed/"],["image_src","http://rack.1.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEzLzA0LzE5LzA5L1NjcmVlblNob3QyLmFiNGZlLnBuZwpwCXRodW1iCTcyMHg3MjAjCmUJanBn/a58cefb4/20b/Screen-Shot-2013-04-18-at-5.10.40-PM.jpg"]],"meta_property":[["og:url","http://mashable.com/2013/04/18/star-wars-rss-feed/"],["og:title","Forget Google Reader. Here's Star Wars Reader"],["og:type","article"],["og:site_name","Mashable"],["og:image","http://rack.1.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEzLzA0LzE5LzA5L1NjcmVlblNob3QyLmFiNGZlLnBuZwpwCXRodW1iCTcyMHg3MjAjCmUJanBn/a58cefb4/20b/Screen-Shot-2013-04-18-at-5.10.40-PM.jpg"],["og:article:published_time","2013-04-19T00:55:25Z"],["og:article:modified_time","2013-04-19T00:55:39Z"]],"meta_name":[["description","Still bummed about the fact that Google is killing its RSS feed service, Google Reader, on July 1? Us too. But there are other ways to read the headlines from your favorite webs..."],["keywords",["uncategorized","tech","dev-design"]],["twitter:title","Forget Google Reader. Here's Star Wars Reader"],["twitter:description","Still bummed about the fact that Google is killing its RSS feed service, Google Reader, on July 1? Us too. But there are other ways to read the headlines from your favorite websites. We've covered a b..."],["twitter:image","http://rack.1.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEzLzA0LzE5LzA5L1NjcmVlblNob3QyLmFiNGZlLnBuZwpwCXRodW1iCTU2MHg3NTAKZQlqcGc/25aaad7f/20b/Screen-Shot-2013-04-18-at-5.10.40-PM.jpg"],["twitter:site","@mashable"],["twitter:url","http://mashable.com/2013/04/18/star-wars-rss-feed/"],["twitter:creator","@mashable"],["twitter:card","photo"],["twitter:image:width","560"],["twitter:image:height","750"]],"short_url":[["short_url","http://on.mash.to/13s2Xxn"]]};If you're running out of space on your Android smartphone or tablet and want a quick fix, two Northern California brothers may have a solution.
Bay Area-based Andy and Rich (no last names identified) were initially frustrated that their Nexus tablet didn't have a built-in SD card reader to expand storage. So they developed a mini MicroSD card reader for Android devices, which plugs into the phone or tablet via micro-USB, as explained in the video above.
While the reader can fit on any Android device with mini-USB, the brothers have only confirmed that it works with certain phone and tablet models they've tested with. But to mount a Class 2 card on your device, they suggest using third party software, like StickMount.
The duo are trying to raise $5,000 on Kickstarter to further develop their mini MicroSD reader. With 29 days left in the Kickstarter campaign, they've received over $1,400 in pledges. Backers who pledge at least $8 can get the card reader.
Image and thumbnail courtesy of Andy and Rich via Kickstarter
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Pete Pachal2013-04-02 15:51:18 UTCMourning the impending demise of Google Reader? You'll at least be able the take some solace in the news that Reeder, one of the most popular apps for using the service, is now free.
As of today, Reeder is free for iPad and Mac, the developer announced. Previously, those downloads would have cost you $4.99 each. The iPhone version, however, retains its $2.99 price.
Why would the app, which is a simple client for Google Reader, continue to charge for downloads when the service it depends on is going to be shut down on July 1? First, the iPhone version has more functionality. And second, Reeder is evolving. The developer, Silvio Rizzi, says he'll continue supporting it — in some form — after Google Reader dies.
For now, Rizzi isn't saying exactly what Reeder will become, but he did reveal the next step in its transformation in a note on the Reeder site:
I'm currently working on integrating Feedbin and adding support for standalone/local RSS (still experimental). You'll get these features with the next update (3.1) which should be ready soon. That's just the beginning, the plan is to add more services you can choose from in the next weeks and months.
The Mac and iPad apps are only free until they get the Reeder 2.0 update, bringing them up to speed with the iPhone app. That should happen "in the coming months," Rizzi said.
Reeder is often hailed as the best client app for Google Reader. Mashable senior tech analyst Christina Warren picked it as one of the Best Mac Apps of 2011, saying it was "a great looking RSS client that syncs with Google Reader.... My favorite aspect of Reeder is its ease of use in sharing and syncing feeds with other services."
Will you be downloading Reeder now that it's free, or have you already moved on to another service such as Feedly? Let us know in the comments.
Mashable composite, images via iStockphoto, filo
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