I was an avid Google Reader user so its deactivation was an annoying nuisance even as the deactivation presented an opportunity to explore and experiment with other options.
Before writing this post I read 10 Google Reader Alternatives That Will Ease Your RSS Pain to see what this particular article suggested as alternatives, and I noticed a related article for GoRead an open-source Google Reader clone. Had I known about this open-source product, I would have tried it; perhaps I still will just out of curiosity.
Old Reader
I first tried the Old Reader and liked it. However, the fact that it was overwhelmed and bogged down for so long quickly became unappealing and I unsubscribed. I recently tested it again by trying to subscribe to the Nebraska Learns 2.0 blog and the Old Reader was unresponsive. So, I deactivated The Old Reader again.
Feedly
I am using Feedly and like it. It is simple and reasonably uncluttered. I do wish there was the equivalent of the Google “Next” bookmarklet which made reading entries smooth and almost effortless.
Using Feedly, I find navigating the list of entries to read a bit cumbersome on both my iPhone and my Netbook/desktop and recently marked an entire category “as read.” when I only intended to mark the entry I’d just finished. That’s when I discovered that unlike Google Reader, it isn’t possible to click on a category and see all the entries, read and unread if I want to go back and re-read a particular post. Maybe that sort of thing is possible and I’ve not discovered how to go about it. I miss this ability that was possible with Google Reader.
RSSOwl
At home, my “desktop” has Ubuntu as its operating system and Feedly is not available for that. Consequently, I searched for some options and I chose RSSOwl after trial and error. Since I just recently decided on RSSOwl, I haven’t played with it a great deal and I have a lot to learn. What I like about so far, is its plainness and simplicity in appearance and so far, navigation seems fairly easy. Time will tell whether it remains my choice for this computer as I had also considered trying Thunderbird which I discovered was installed — AFTER, I had settled on RSSOwl.
Feedly works well for me and remains my reader of choice but I’m open to additional experimentation.
Susie Learns 2.0 