Seriously, Google is retiring Google Reader? I feel like they’re trying to get into every corner of the internet and they’re giving this up? I thought they had the market on this, maybe I wrong and there is something better. But many many feed readers (clients) support this program and they’re giving it up…
Am I expressing my disbelief enough? I’m not even sure what I’d chose as an alternative. I think bloglines is still around (wasn’t it supposed to go away?) but do they support third party APIs? I need to do it on the desktop via the web (and/or a client) and I need to also be able to do it on my iPhone and iPad while keeping all the feeds synced so that I’m not rereading them.
I gotta tell you, personally, I think this is going to affect me more than if I heard that gmail would be shut down. I can get and set up and support other e-mail accounts, there are standards there, I don’t think there are standards for syncing feeds and unread feed data, is there? It’s not the only service Google is shutting down.
That said: I’m clearly looking for suggestions for a feed reader that I can use on the web and have client software (apps) on my iDevices that will keep them all in sync. To be clear, I need the feeds themselves to sync but then items I read need to be marked as read on all devices. And I’ve got to figure it out before July 1, 2013!
The single most vital thing I do online, several times a day most days, is Google Reader. When I saw that notice, I felt like I’d been stabbed.
For what it’s worth, here’s a link to one of the first things I found after the panic cleared out a little:
http://bookishcomforts.blogspot.com/2013/03/google-reader-is-retiring-so-now-what-4.html
This is from a blogger who has done some research and reviews on the top few contenders.