

Show HN: My all-nighter project to find the best Google Reader alternative - ashamedlion
http://www.replacereader.com/

======
jsmeaton
Am I the only one who just wants a list of updated articles and possibly an
unread count? I don't want social in my RSS. I don't want to "discover" feeds.
I don't want to be told what to read. I don't want to follow people.

For me, the whole point of RSS is that I find a site I like, I add it to my
list, and I'm told when there's a new article.

I've tried several alternatives in the last 24 hours, and most of them ignore
my actual feeds and give me a whole lot of machine learned articles I couldn't
care less about.

It's not always the topic that's interesting, it's the writing style, or some
kind of imaginary connection I've made with the site or author.

If I want to 'discover' articles, I'll browse HN or Reddit. If it's something
I think I'll want to keep updated about, that's when I add it to my RSS.

~~~
fakeer
\- Use a client that supports RSS.

\- Sync your data with Dropbox and use it on other machines.

Or

FeedHQ.org (Open Source) looks like a fine alternative but I am not sure what
it supports yet in terms of your needs. Like they do have list, unread counts,
tags(categories). Well, they have support read it later(which you said you
don't want, maybe - but it's not that social :P)

Hell, even I do not want a social service or another GR or maybe not another
free service that will go kaput anyday.

I guess FeedHQ guys have a real chance here with NewsBlur too cluttered and
too slow.

~~~
jsmeaton
FeedHQ seems very close to what I want, unfortunately it's throwing a 500
error when importing my subscriptions. I'll give it a more closer look later,
thanks for that.

Edit: and it's open source. This definitely seems like a good base to start
from if it doesn't fit my needs.

~~~
fakeer
Exactly. I just don't see why dev(s) are not jumping at this opportunity.
Though I saw one dev wishing luck to NewsBlur on twitter :-)

~~~
jsmeaton
I'm not interested in making money from such a venture, I'm interested in a
service I can use. If I have to write it myself though, I will. I'll be
shopping for alternatives this weekend, and starting a github project if I
find nothing that suits.

There's got to be some people around here doing their own that would roughly
align with what I'm after. And I'm happy to pay for such a thing.

Should be a very interesting couple of months for sure.

~~~
fakeer
Well, sounds nice. Do keep us posted in case you start sth. Will see if I can
contribute(or use).

My reference to jumping was that I like the ideas of Pinboard and the elk and
there's no reason why one for feeds wouldn't work. Work (esp well crafted and
made for others to use - many ppl) requires time and effort and I find it
natural for this work/job to be a paying one to be able to sustain interest
and enthusiasm.

------
Fizzer
This isn't how you go about finding which is the best. This is how you go
about finding which is the most popular.

Voting is inherently skewed towards popularity, which is not always correlated
with quality.

From the headline, I had assumed you spent all night learning the ins and outs
of every option and were going to present your findings. I was disappointed to
find this was just a poll.

~~~
ashamedlion
Indeed, this is actually our eventual goal. The idea was to get something out,
aggregate the most exhaustive list of RSS readers and then add the comparison
details. It takes time!

------
loire280
This is a great idea, but I think the rush to find an alternative is premature
- there's going to be a huge shift in the RSS reader landscape over the next
few months, and the best alternative may not even be announced yet.

~~~
icebraining
Switching an RSS reader isn't (or shouldn't be) particularly onerous, so
there's really no reason to avoid switching even if a new one comes later.

------
brianwillis
Nice touch with the bobbing ship on the side there.

------
mattmcknight
Surprised Feedly is so highly ranked. I tried it out after the last set of
Google Reader changes and deleted it after about a week. The mobile app is
really awful for skimming lots of content and is too focused on presenting a
newspaper like layout. It's all pictures...

~~~
gnoupi
Also, the Chrome extension is taking some liberties to "personalize
suggestions":
[https://getsatisfaction.com/feedly/topics/chrome_app_permiss...](https://getsatisfaction.com/feedly/topics/chrome_app_permissions_are_too_broad_why)

------
charlieok
It's worth separating clients from servers, and noting which clients can sync
with which servers.

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colbyh
Nitpicking I know but reusing the Google Reader favicon actually caused me
confusion for a second. Cool idea though, and way more interesting than what I
did last night!

Anyone complaining about "the RSS landscape changingblah blah blah" must
really hate fun. Someone did this in a night to address an immediate problem
and probably had a blast doing it, let the guy (girl?) enjoy the fruit of
their labor.

------
cwp
This is great! There is one thing missing though. I tried to subscribe to the
site in Reader and it couldn't find a feed. Could you?

------
ronbo
its nice - but you might want to just mine the twitters mentioning these sites
to get a bit more content.

------
xpose2000
Well done. This site was worth the work, even if it will be a short lived
project.

I voted for feedly. Those guys also promised a smooth transition once google
reader shuts down. Not sure what else you could want.

~~~
ktrgardiner
But it's certainly a format which can be expanded upon and applied to the
recommending of any number of things.

------
ufo
My problem right now is not getting a list of names of popular feed readers -
I can already see that by just browsing any of the many comment threads that
have popped up on the internet where people bring up their favourite
alternative.

What I really need is something to help me make a decision, by comparing what
features does each reader support and so on. How much does it cost? Can I see
my read in multiple devices? Does it work on smartphones? Can I share links
with people? etc...

~~~
ashamedlion
We are most likely going to be adding this. It was in the original plan, but
we wanted to get something out first.

------
3amOpsGuy
Really impressed with the aesthetics, especially for such a quick turnaround.
Had a peek under the covers and it appears to be well done there too.

Top marks in my book.

~~~
jbackus
Thank you! I threw together the backbone action under the hood, all credit
goes to Alain for the awesome design. We're pretty sure this post would have
about 3 upvotes had it not been for the bobbing ship.

------
budman
I am really surprised in all these Google Reader threads I have not seen
mention of the free, self-hosted and perfectly simple RSSLounge. I been using
it for three years now and even donated.

Development has stalled on this one though but the developer has a new RSS
project with more social stuff. It is called Selfoss and is at
<http://selfoss.aditu.de/> .

------
olegp
I've been doing the same and adding them to StartHQ:
<https://starthq.com/apps/?q=reader>

The web app profile pages include speed & trustworthiness info as well as
mentions of the app on Hacker News. I will also add popularity rankings and
TLDR versions of the ToS over the next few days.

------
latraveler
Feedly looks cool and all, but how do I add a feed? I spent 2 minutes and
still can't figure it out.

------
themgt
Very nice! I'd really like if you could mark which ones are available open
source to run yourself.

------
theone
Isn't it strange that Newsblur is not even in top 5, the other poll[1] on HN
suggested other wise. It was at top of the list on HN Poll.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5373538>

~~~
ashamedlion
Some sites more aggressively got their users to tweet the required hashtags
than others.

------
latraveler
Does anyone know how a good solution to this.

[http://superuser.com/questions/566201/google-reader-
export-i...](http://superuser.com/questions/566201/google-reader-export-
import-rss-article-history)

------
bochoh
This looks great. A few animated fish and/or bubbles down towards the bottom
of the list could break up the monotony of that long list. (Or even let the
ship sink slowly as the ready scrolls down.)

------
tempestn
Does Feedly have a web-based client? I'm looking for something to recommend to
users at www.searchtempest.com. Many of them have never used (or even heard
of) RSS before, so simplicity is key.

~~~
wubbfindel
They have an "in-browser" client, but I think you may have to install the
correct extension for it to work. Check out www.feedly.com.

~~~
tempestn
Ya, I did. Was hoping I'd missed it somehow. Looks like it's just Chrome,
Firefox, iOS and Android. Great for you or I, but not for many of my users
unfortunately.

------
mmahemoff
Chuffed to be included here, thanks! Would you mind switching the tag to
#PlayerFM as a lot of Twitter clients will treat the "." incorrectly.

~~~
ashamedlion
Alright, fixed it!

------
tutuca
Made me learn about <http://www.feedly.com/> which looks really nice.

------
dstroot
How are you guys processing the tweets to show the results? Would love to know
more about that.

~~~
jbackus
We're using Ruby, Sinatra, HTTParty, Twitter Search API, Postgres, and Unicorn
on a Heroku instance. Basically requesting the page pulls recent tweets from
twitter matching the search '#replacereader', those tweets are checked against
the DB to prevent dupe counting or multiple votes from one account, and new
votes are added accordingly. Vote counts along with our list of replacements
are pulled from the database and passed to a haml view, and unicorn caches
page requests (including DB lookups and Twitter lookups) for 60 seconds to
prevent exceeding APIs or Heroku's Postgres database limits.

~~~
dstroot
THANKS!

------
lowmagnet
Nice stuff, I voted for Fever, even though it has some usability issues.

~~~
nwh
The results it pulls together aren't stellar, and the DRM (if you could call
it that) makes me ridiculously uncomfortable too.

------
mikemoka
very nice, I also suggest [http://alternativeto.net/software/google-
reader/?platform=on...](http://alternativeto.net/software/google-
reader/?platform=online)

------
drewschrauf
I adore the design. Nice touch with the sinking ship.

------
smnl
Thanks for the shoutout for BlogRoll! :)

------
ajtaylor
I'm getting an Internal Server Error. :(

~~~
ashamedlion
Sorry, lots of traffic. If you refresh a couple times, it usually comes back
:)

------
afx2in
i like flipboard the best, but it still needs google reader for my rss
feeds...

------
lucaspiller
Love the CSS animation :D

------
asdstuff
i just found out, i can import my feeds to yandex.com's reader.

fast, minimal interface without any bullshit.

