Need to Replace Google Reader? Try Feedly!

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Today I’m switching gears a little bit and instead of sharing a recipe we’re going to look at another topic of great importance.

Google has discontinued Google Reader.  Nobody knows why.  Just to p*ss us off I think.

OK, maybe that’s not the reason, but it doesn’t make much sense to the millions of its users (me included) who had been using Google Reader for years to follow and organize the latest posts from our favorite blogs.  It was a great organizing tool to subscribe to the electronic feeds of websites and get the latest updates all in one place.

But as of July 1, 2013 Google Reader is history.  Rest in Peace.

So what are we to do now?  Is there a good replacement for Google Reader?

I moped around for several weeks trying to figure out what to do, BUT – I’ve finally found a substitute for Google Reader that I’m really liking (a lot!) so I thought I would share.

I’m now using Feedly and I think I might even like it better  (true!)

Replace Google Reader with Feedly

 

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT FEEDLY

Here are a few things that are getting the thumbs up from me now that I’ve made the switch to Feedly.

Easier to organize your feeds –

It’s definitely worth the time to set up some categories to organize the blogs you follow and Feedly has a very user friendly way to get that done.   The categories display on the left side (same as Google Reader did).

Replace Google Reader with Feedly

Easier to delete feeds –

This was one thing that bugged me with Google Reader.  Even when I thought I had deleted a blog’s feed that I no longer wanted to follow, it would just keep reappearing.  With Feedly I was able to clean out some of the dead wood.  You’d be surprised over time how many people stop writing their blogs.

Easier to mark groups of feeds as Read –

Sometimes you don’t really have time to read all the blogs you follow and with Feedly there’s a nice big ole check mark at the bottom of the page so you can just mark the whole category as “Read”.  AND, when you do that, it automatically pops to the next category on the list.  This lets you move through things at a nice fast pace.

Replace Google Reader with Feedly

Different views for feeds –

I like to keep Feedly on the “Title” view which shows just the name of the blog posts (like in the screenshots above), but there are other fun options that display pictures too.  The “Card” option almost looks like Pinterest!

Replace Google Reader with Feedly

Better Font –

Yup, I can just see things better in Feedly.  Oh the joy of bifocals.

 

If you’ve been wondering what to use for a replacement for Google Reader, I would certainly check out Feedly.  At this point it might be too late to import any of your old Google Reader data into Feedly, however Google’s official message is that your Reader data will not be “permanently and irrevocably” deleted until July 15, 2013.

And a couple frustrations . . .

rss buttonIf you’re not familiar with electronic feeds, you subscribe to them using the orange buttons (like the one pictured here) found on many websites.

However when you click on most of these buttons on websites, Feedly is not listed as one of the options for subscribing.  Maybe that will change soon.

In the meantime you can use the “Add Content” option in Feedly and just type in, or copy and paste in, the address of a blog or website that you would like to follow.

One other thing that I’m not liking so much is that rather than display a date of the blog post entry it says weird things like “18h” if it was posted 18 hours ago, or “2d” if it was 2 days ago.  I would just like the date on there please.

Would you folks at Feedly kindly change that for me?

I hope so.

 

Need a few more bright ideas?
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3 Comments

  1. The reason Google reader is removed is in the logon/setup of the new account. You give it access your information and email contacts. So if you intend to use them but want to keep your personal life private, then setup an alternate id for running the web when gathering information. Remember Google tracks and records every internet keystroke that passes thru any Google account, the federal government has used court orders to secure that data to justify more intrusive searches of your person and property.