I'm sure all the die hard Blogliners have heard by now that Bloglines is shutting down on October 1.
A moment of silence, please.
OK, where was I? Oh yes. My rant of the day (well, yesterday, really).
On the heels of the announced demise of Bloglines, I've seen many recommendations for Google Reader, which at this point is the ONLY choice left. The problem for me is that I HATE Google Reader. H. A. T. E. There, I said it. And I know I'm in the minority.
I've tried it numerous times over the last year or two and it's just kludgey. Sure, Bloglines has had its own share of problems but aside from that, it's just a better feed reader IMO so I overlooked them. Especially when during some of their outages, I would try Google Reader again and each time go running back to Bloglines.
So yesterday I did the export/import thing again so that Google Reader could pick up where my Bloglines is leaving off because I knew the only other choice would be to manually visit each and every blog I regularly read and who has time for that! GR was TORTURE. Oh My Freakin' Gawd. It was so SLOW. And it sucked every last resource out of my pretty powerful computer. So much so, that I was beginning to wonder if it was going to explode. Seriously. OK, maybe not. But close.
Well, today I learned I'm going to have to eat just a little crow on trashing Google Reader. (But I still think it's kludgey.) The resource sucking? Totally Firefox, and its horrible handling of Javascript. Firefox is not a speed demon with Bloglines either, but it's been quite passable and not the honkin' big resource hog as with GR.
I downloaded and installed Opera this morning and the clouds parted to let the angels sing. IOW, GR is now at least speedy if still kludgey.
But you know what this means, right? I have to decide if I want to spend the time to move over completely to Opera or use both it and Firefox. I know I'm getting old because the more things I have to change, the crankier I get. And to think I actually used to enjoy (and get paid for) troubleshooting software. Yep. I 'm old. Or maybe I'd just rather sew.
So endeth my rant of the day. ;-)
Doesn't your email client have an RSS reader? Or are you looking for something more portable?
ReplyDeleteI only use GR so Byline on my iPod touch can grab things for me. I heart Byline
Hee hee. I have no experience with anything but Google Reader, so I didn't realize it was slow :-)
ReplyDeleteI used to use RSS feeds in my mail, which became ridiculous. I think GR is awesome, but again, see, I don't know about anything else.
But I hear ya on the change thing. We got a new desktop, with Win 7, and I was worried...for at least 5 minutes. I heart Win 7 and am glad I missed the whole Vista debacle. Now if only ALL my PCs were robust enough to run Win 7 like the new i7 desktop. :-)
Goodness, I had never even heard of Bloglines!
ReplyDeleteI had similar performance issues with Facebook and Google Docs. After weeks of profanity I also discovered that the problem was Firefox. I use Google Chrome now and I'm much happier!
ReplyDeleteI switched to Chrome when I started using Google reader (I got tired of Bloglines not updating,) and yes, it is much better. Firefox can't handle GR for some reason.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that made me upset with the bloglines shutdown is how they were all "RSS is dead, we're all going to use Facebook and Twitter now!" Which is so not a substitute at all...at least not when you follow as many blogs as I do!
If you are on blogger why don't you just follow? Or am I the only one who doesn't use Google Reader or bloglines and just reads their blogs by following?
ReplyDeleteBecause if a blog is not hosted on Blogger (Wordpress, etc.), you can't follow. Following is a Blogger thing.
ReplyDeleteI guess I just don't understand all the feed reader issues. It's really very simple if one uses Internet Explorer. A blog has the orange RSS symbol in the top right of the browser. Click on that to subscribe and the list of your subscriptions shows up automatically in your favorites under the tab called Feeds. Easy peasy. I also have mine sync with Outlook and Windows Live Mail, so I use those and can read them offline so I don't have to be online to catch up wtih blogs.
ReplyDeleteI like using Chrome and Feedly. I was on Bloglines prior to the change and Feedly imported all my rss feeds. It's similar to Bloglines but better.
ReplyDeleteI have used Bloglines since I started reading blogs and was initially sad to hear it was going. I tried Google reader as that is what most people said they used, but I hated it. Sorry to those who don't, it's just not for me. I am now a happy user of FeedDemon. After only a week or so I feel like I've used it forever, and it imported all my blogs as well. Too easy!
ReplyDeleteI am with you on your sadness at the loss of Bloglines, and the dislike of GoogleReader. I just downloaded FeedDemon and am giving it a try. Please let us know if you find something else that you like.
ReplyDeleteImport???
ReplyDelete...
..
.
I just spent some quality time yesterday visiting each blog and cutting and pasting the links. Boy do I feel dumb.
I feel your pain - I felt the same way when I discovered bloglines was closing. I'm still not sure what I'm going to use but I see there's some good suggestions here in the comments.
ReplyDeleteI use Firefox and GR and haven't noticed any of what you mention. I hate Bloglines like you hate GR. :) Then again, I don't actually "use" GR. Do you know about the NEXT button in GR? (http://www.google.com/reader/settings) Look under the Goodies tab. This is what I use and I love it. Anyway waving back at you while stuffing my face with lunch. :)
ReplyDeleteThis is a useful post/comments for me. I was happy with Bloglines too, & I'm finding GR slow. So now I have a while lot of options to try :)
ReplyDeletei just brought all of my blogs over to the google reader too and i don't like it much. but then, i also dislike change so that has something to do with it, i am sure! :)
ReplyDeleteI was sad about this too, but I have to say for me the importing was incredibly quick and easy. It's still taking me a while to get used to the format though and when I click on new items some things pop up twice several days in a row. Not the end of the world but annoying. Oh well I guess we will get used to it.
ReplyDeleteI hate google reader too and really liked Bloglines. But guess what I found?! NewsFire! It's for Mac and it reads just as nicely as bloglines. Only thing is I couldn't figure out if there was a way to import my feeds so I did go ahead and cut and paste each individual blog into it. Wasn't too bad and it helped me do some weeding out.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't love GR, I do love Firefox and haven't had any issues with it being slow on anything. Hmmm. Strange how behaviours vary from PC to PC. Or maybe you have a Mac?
ReplyDeleteWHA?!?!? how did I miss this announcement? I LOVE Bloglines and hate GR. however, I cannot imagine trying to follow blogs without something like bloglines or GR. Guess I will have to cross over to the dark side.
ReplyDeleteI was so disappointed w/GR because I love almost everything else Google.
I don't know squat about bloglines, readers, etc. But I do know a bit about browsers.
ReplyDeleteI fell in love with Chrome after Firefox began all the changes that made me cry. I used to love Firefox, but it doesn't work too well since they added that widget bar on the left of the screen. I'm suspecting resource hog.
Anyway, a very good substitute browser after Chrome is Safari. Apple made it available for PCs and I really like it.
PS. My husband and I are computer geeks so these aren't just idle recommendations.
yeah, i don't like google reader either, though i'm dealing with it. it is SO s-l-o-w, i thought it was just me but apparently it's my firefox. :(
ReplyDeletei might try some of the other suggestions.
yeah, i don't like google reader either, though i'm dealing with it. it is SO s-l-o-w, i thought it was just me but apparently it's my firefox. :(
ReplyDeletei might try some of the other suggestions.
Wow, I guess I'm just like Carolyn, I'm clueless about bloglines. I use GR somewhat, but only to subscribe to blogs. In the upper right corner of my address bar in FF, I sub to all blogs (wordpress,typepad etc.) by clicking the orange rss button to sub in GR. Then once i go back to my dashboard (in blogger) click the add button, a box opens with options to add from url(manually enter) or import from Gr. Ticking import shows all blogs from Gr. You can then choose which blogs u'd like to show in your dashboard! It shows all blogs I follow updated in realtime (mins. included)! I have web based blogs too!
ReplyDelete