I confess I am a little stubborn when it comes to technology and software choices. If something is working fine, I will stick with it, and making me change to another platform will take a lot of effort.
Bloglines, the RSS reader, is a good example. I started using it around four years ago, and it worked just fine for what I needed. Then Google launched Google Reader. I created an account there initially, and even used it for a couple of weeks, but then I returned to Bloglines, because I was used to it.
But then a couple of weeks ago I started noticing an issue: apparently some of the RSS feeds I was subscribed to were not being pulled. Probably it was a small glitch on my account, but it was pretty annoying.
That convinced me to try Google Reader again. So far I am liking it. I still believe Bloglines was faster and simpler to use (two features I highly value on any piece of software), but Google Reader has more features and is more customizable.
What about you guys, what RSS reader do you use? Have you tried many of them before settling down?
Bloglines hasn’t been actively developed for over a year now. They’re keeping the site up, but there have always been issues with feeds stopping being crawled and they don’t seem to be keeping on top of it very well.
I’ve been a long time Bloglines user and I held out for as long as I could but even I’ve switched to Google Reader now.
If anyone still wants to use Bloglines and a feed they’re subscribed to isn’t updating I suggest you go to the #bloglines irc channel on freenode and make some noise. That’s the only way I found to get a message through to the maintenance staff in China and frankly I can’t be bother to do it any more.
I can’t believe it, my story is just the same as yours. I had been using Bloglines for years and then a couple of weeks ago I noticed that not all the feeds were working. I switched to Google Reader and have used it ever since. I’m still getting used to it, but it’s ok, even better than Bloglines. I find it a bit more difficult to keep an item is unread in Google Reader.
Sadly, I haven’t switched to an RSS reader yet. I have bookmark folders with all the sites I read regularly, and just open them all in tabs when I’m ready to read. I know a lot of people live and die by RSS, but I just haven’t been able to get into it. Maybe I need to give it a try again.
Daniel,
I’ve been devoted with Google Reader ever since I have my own Blogspot blog.Guess with the fact that the RSS reader service is integrated with Google,I think,why not? At least,I don’t have to go through the hassle of sign up with another 3rd party services that providing the same thing.
I have some of my online friends that using BlogLovin…I got tempted because of the name,but neh,I end up decided to stick with Google Reader.
I have been using Mac Mail. My goal is to get the google reader to match the feeds so I can see them when i’m on the road. Working on switching over. I will be looking to see if there is a iphone app for google reader?
I used Bloglines for quite awhile then tried Google Reader for several months. I ended up going back to Bloglines for the simplicity.
Been a Google Reader user for a couple years now. Before that, I was using Newsgator’s desktop client. My initial reason for changing was a need for an online service that did the same job. And while Newsgator offered that at the time, it wasn’t integrated with everything else (gmail, etc.) like Reader. I’m hooked not only for its ease of use, but the “trends” and other statistics it keeps, letting me know which of the feeds I follow need to be dumped and how many people are equally following through Reader. It’s really handy for judging some content. For instance Daniel, you’ve got 11,603 subscribers according to Google Reader (I’m positive this varies) and you average 5.8 posts per week. Does anything else do that? I don’t think so.
Yep, Google Reader has a very nifty feature that lets you follow event sites, that doesn’t have RSS or Atom feeds – G Reader can check then for new content (dunno if it works or not). Anyway, I’m a poweruser (or megauser), following 550+ sites and blogs. I have to chem them every single day.. twice at least 🙂 And that’s why i’m stuck with Google’s FeedDemon – a powerhouse for checking feeds for new content with many options, but it needs lots of system resources to run properly.
I have been a loyal Google Reader fan for years now. I remember the good old days of Reader Beta. I think you made the right choice. It is great once you get used to it.
I used Bloglines for awhile also because I like the simplicity of it. But then I switched to Newsgator because I liked the way it handled feeds better.
Unfortunately, Newsgator got rid of its online feed service so I switched to using the feed reader in Thunderbird. So far it’s okay. The only thing I don’t like is that I can’t access my feeds when I’m not at home.
I started out with Bloglines and found it user-friendly. But switched to Google Reader at the recommendation of a co-worker. I had the annoying habit of clogging up his email with links to great blog articles – not the most efficient method for sharing. So I tried Google Reader and love the social features – you can even share with notes. I’m managing my blog activities more efficiently.
I used Bloglines too for several years (for work-related blog feeds) and liked it fine. I started using GoogleReader for more personal blogs (the ones I read at home.) I started noticing a lot more errors in retrieving feeds from Bloglines too and eventually (about a year ago) switched the work blogs to GoogleReader as well. I’ve been pretty happy with it so far. No real issues to speak of.
Thanks for the timely tip Daniel. I was planning to add my new website to Bloglines.
I use Brief a d FF add on and have been happy with it the past year, but I do sometimes notice feeds not being updating automatically..lil annoying, but not ready to jump to g reader yet..lol I like simple and easy and Brief is that.
Google Reader – not because I have any particular “thing” for Google products but I find mousing difficult with my arthritic hands and the Reader keyboard shortcuts are great. Only rarely need to use the mouse.
Google Reader is best without a doubt. Before that I used Newsgator, but they closed. Such as shame. It was a really good online rss reader.
I use Tabbloid, which is a free service that send the feeds in a pdf file as your own personal news paper. You can select what time it should send out, and what email it should sent to.
Using Google Reader, easy and fast to use.
I just started getting into following feeds, as trying to follow so many blogs without them has become taxing on my Firefox tabs. I heard of Bloglines several years ago, but never got into it enough to see it’s benefits. I started using Google Reader recently to see how it worked, and I had it integrated in my Gmail window with Integrated Gmail plugin (as well as Google Redesigned). Now I’m glad I checked it out, makes scanning blogs so much faster. I wish I would have gotten more into Bloglines before now. I’m going to try double posting to both Google Reader and Bloglines so I can check Bloglines out too, but right now Google Reader has me sold!
Google Reader is one of my favorite services by Google,
i think you won’t switch back to bloglines anymore.
I use Google Reader on iGoogle.
I’ve used Google Reader for about 2 months now. Love it.
Quick and easy. And beats the heck out of IE’s Feed Reader 😉
I used to use FeedDemon and loved it, but when FeedDemon implemented support for Google Reader I found myself checking out my news feeds on there more often.
Before I knew it, FeedDemon was completely phased out and I’ve been using Google Reader ever since. It’s so simple to use I love it!
I use the SharpReader. It’s very fast and easy to use. I like very simple applications for many tasks where I don’t need extra features and they would only annoy me. 20 feeds I’m subscribed to don’t overwhelm me, hence no need to organize them.
i’d like to hear more, i haven’t experienced Blogline problems and so far, have been pleased
tell us more !
I love Google Reader. Keyboard shortcuts are also a killer feature, which allows me to sift through a lot of news in little time 🙂 Helps me save a lot of time.
Plus for every feed, Google keeps all the posts ever posted for that feed (since the day the first person subscribed to this feed).
I use FeedDemon, but I also use Google Reader, and, when offered the choice, I have my favorite blog feeds show up on my iGoogle page.
I’ve been using Google Reader for years. I know that there are plenty of people who don’t like it quite as much, but I’ve found that I can actually organize a lot of information so that I can read through it really quickly with Google Reader. The secret, at least for me, seems to be using folders to sort feeds.
I started using Bloglines as my RSS reader about 3 years ago, but switched over to Google Reader not too long after.
I think I originally liked Bloglines a little better, but I decided to make the switch because I was trying to use all the Google products (docs, gmail, calendar, reader, etc) thinking that over time all the products would be tightly integrated.
I use Google Reader but probably I’ll look for something else. I think I’ve just got bored with Google…
First thought was – ‘wow, do people still use Bloglines?’. 🙂
I used it years ago but converted to Google Reader when it first came out and never went back. I guess you don’ t know what you’re missing if you never had it.
You an update automatically by clicking the ‘Subscriptions’ link in Reader. I love the ability to have my suscriptions in folders and also love that it’s incorporated into all of my other google apps. I only have to log in once and can use my Google documents, gmail, calendar, and notebooks. Very convenient.
Karen
I subscribe to rss feeds via e-mail with apple mail. Updates every 30 minutes, so I’m always on top of things.
Anyone have a reader that updates faster, and automatically? I’d definitely be interested.
Google Reader is just convenient because I always have Gmail up! Been testing a lot of RSS readers out their, and right now Google Reader will do until I find something better.
Google Reader! Love it so much. I’ve never tried anything else, actually. Tried Google Reader and never going back.
I tried out Google Reader as well but to be honest, I didn’t like it. So I did the same as you and went back to netvibes (which I still use).
I used Netvibes as my start page and reader, but switched to Google Reader as Netvibes as constantly down, and slower than slow. Have loved it so far, can’t see any reason to go back now.
I have 200+ feeds in Google Reader.
What I love:
1. The ability to create a blogroll bundle which I can easily update and add to my blog with just a little piece of code.
2. The “Next” button (found in Goodies) which creates a bookmarklet for any folder. After adding the bookmarklet to my toolbar I can read through every post from that folder within the context of the original page with one click.
I have always used Google Reader, and it has been completely satisfactory.
I especially like the way that I can easily share interesting articles using the new Google Buzz.
No doubt that the share and collaboration features in Google Reader are helpful.
Also, the search feature can be a life saver when trying to pull up useful, but old, information.
I also use the J and K keys to quickly skim through new content.
More than 3+ years and my first choice was Google Reader, quite satisfied with it.
My heavy favorite is NetNewsWire. On my main computer, that’s all I use.
On Windows, my heavy favorite is Feedreader, but I don’t use it anymore because I can’t sync it with my main computer. So anytime I’m off my main computer, I now use Google Reader. But it’s a distant second in every area except syncing.
A few of Google Reader’s biggest problems:
1) No password protected feeds.
2) Doesn’t update some feeds as frequently as I’d like (for example, when I made a script to proxy password protected feeds to that I could read them in Google Reader, I discovered that they updated MUCH less frequently).
3) No 3-pane view (feeds down the left side, headlines on top on the right and content below). This make skimming lots of items more cumbersome.
One nice thing about Google Reader is anything you share will autmoatically post to your Buzz acount. That’s a nice time saver which is nice to have in the bookmarking world.
I am a long-time Bloglines user who just switched over to Google Reader last month. My reason? Google Reader’s tagging abilities. I am able to process and file my RSS reading much more efficiently using Google Reader’s tags than using Bloglines. This is the post that convinced me to switch: Read This Blog on Your Own Time
@Mihai, there are some blogs I read everyday (e.g., problogger), and I noticed that Bloglines was not getting updates from those blogs for days in a row.
Might be a glitch only on my account though.
Since i started collecting RSS i have only used google reader. it haves all I need. Great features. It is link to all my other google things so I don’t need to do another log in.
It is now even better with some extensions for google chrome.
google reader plus > [http://bit.ly/cDxPKw]
that adds even more great features like themes.
Feedly> [
@Daniel – How did you noticed the problem ? I have 500+ feeds right now.
I used BlogBridge for quite a while because of the “SmartFeeds” feature (great for reading academic journals). It was a pretty great piece of software, but became a bit burdensome. I’ve tried a number of other kinds of readers, but the one I’ve appreciated the most is Google Reader by far.
@Mihai, if I didn’t noticed a problem with my fees I would probably have stayed on Bloglines, as I liked the simple interface.
I’m still a Bloglines user just like you was. Everything is working and I’m used to it. Can you convince me that there is a better service ? Arguments please.
I’m a devoted Google Reader user. Has all the features I need, and quickly gets me to all my other Google services, as well. Here in Guatemala, you use what works.