When I first started reading blogs, on the advice of Fluid Pudding, I used bloglines to keep track of them. I was delighted with myself, it was fantastic. What happened? It announced it was going to close down. With great reluctance, I moved to google reader which I found loathsome. Then bloglines announced that it wasn’t going to close down after all but having forced myself to get used to google reader, I decided to stick with it as, of course, google was a massive company and my effort in getting acquainted with google reader would not be wasted as it would go on forever. Who knew what would happen to bloglines?
Incidentally, following a recommendation from Chris Cactus, I downloaded the feedly app on to my phone in February. It wasn’t for me – interface was too trendy and loading too slow and not designed to skip feeds – but I just let it sit there.
What happened? As you know, google decided to dump its reader. Oh the bitterness. Oh well, I have spent the past couple of weeks getting used to feedly and it’s alright I suppose.
I now predict two things:
1. Google will change its mind about withdrawing reader at the last moment (I, of course, will already have committed to feedly).
2. Feedly will go to the wall.
I see that bloglines is still going.
I use NewsFox, which is a free download from Mozilla that runs out of the Firefox browser. It handles news, blogs, and webcomics and is easy to use — it does not automatically delete read articles, so you can keep things until you manually delete them. However, you have to use the Firefox browser to use it. I like Firefox much better than IE. It’s a much more secure browser platform. I’ve been using both for years without problems.
I too was a fan of bloglines and not keen to leave it. However it changed beyond all recognition when it was taken over, with an annoying “widget” system of squares on the screen even trendier and more annoying than feedly. Not fond of the latter on my phone, either.
Have just finished queuing for The Old Reader and so far quite pleased with it. I plan to try a few more options between now and July.
NewsFox – how does it work on the phone I wonder? Find that this is where I do most of my reading these days. Will probably go blind eventually.
Eimear would be v. interested to hear your best option – you sound like a traditionalist to me..