

Bloglines to close - auxbuss
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/bloglines_closes_shop.php

======
AngryParsley
I used to work on Bloglines. It's sad to see it finally die, but the writing
was on the wall for years.

There are two questions I'd like Ask.com to answer: What will happen to the
source code? and What will happen to the archive of RSS items?

Ideally, Ask.com would open source Bloglines and get the item data over to
archive.org. We never deleted anything, so the item archive is around 11TB and
has blog posts going back to 2003. I bet quite a bit of that data doesn't
exist anywhere else. Although Sturgeon's Law applies, there are some gems in
that data. I took a look once and found some interesting blog posts from the
2004 election cycle and Hurricane Katrina.

I seriously doubt that will happen though. Building an archival tool for the
podserver/itemdbs would require more dev work, and there are the hardware
costs of reliably storing 11TB.

~~~
tomjen3
I hope not - I had private RSS feed from things I don't want to share with the
world, and I can't be the only one.

~~~
AngryParsley
Bloglines already has that logic. It would be built into any archival tool as
well. If the feed url scheme is https or if it's using http auth, it's
private.

------
conesus
A bunch of folks in this thread have asked about an alternative that is better
than Google Reader.

I created NewsBlur, <http://www.newsblur.com>, which is an intelligent feed
reader. It shows you the original site (which is why I never liked using RSS
in the first place, but once you read enough sites, you have little choice but
to switch to a reader). It also has an intelligence trainer that allows you to
explicitly hide and highlight stories that you like or dislike.

It imports directly from Google Reader. It's just a project, but if people
like it well enough, I could be persuaded to add some more advanced features
(metrics on your subscriptions, advanced AI, etc) for a monthly/yearly cost.
I'm afraid to put a Paypal/Amazon Checkout button on there, because that means
NewsBlur is held to a much more difficult/higher standard.

But anyways, please, offer feedback and let me know if you think this is a
good alternative. I worked very hard on NewsBlur, and so I make it all open-
source (everything from the feed fetcher, the reader interface, and the coming
iPhone app) on GitHub, so that other developers could benefit from all the
tricks and knowledge I acquired while creating this multi-faceted project:
<http://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/>.

------
petervandijck
So would now (now that everyone has left the market except the winner) then be
a good time to create a new, better, nextgen kind of RSS reader product (or
something similar)? Something to disrupt Google Reader, the new market leader?
Will the pendulum swing back from centralized (twitter, fb) to distributed
(rss)?

Similar question: is podcasting ever going to go anywhere? Would now not be a
good time to create a product for that market, now that it's been abandoned by
everyone for a few years?

Or are both these technologies/markets evolutionary dead-ends, ie. never going
to go anywhere anymore?

Edit: I did a quick mockup :)
[http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2010/09/10/4765/time-f...](http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2010/09/10/4765/time-
for-a-new-type-of-feed-people-reader)

~~~
skymt
I've been working on a new style of RSS reader in my spare time for a month or
so now. Current RSS readers treat RSS like email, which pressures the user to
at least glance at every item. I have 177 subscriptions in Google Reader, so
you can imagine how much of a time-suck it's become.

Some ideas to solve this: (1) eliminate unread-item counts from the UI, and
(2) introduce Usenet-style scoring and some sort of smart (Bayesian?)
filtering.

The goal is to allow the user to decide how much time to spend reading blogs:
if she only has time to read 5 things before getting back to work, she simply
sorts today's unread items by score and opens the first 5.

Unfortunately, I'm not actually a good programmer, so I haven't gotten far. If
someone skilled would like to implement this, I'd be grateful.

~~~
duopixel
You could try out Planetaki (<http://www.planetaki.com>) it doesn't do
anything fancy, just just puts all your favorite websites on a single page
(full disclosure: I used to work for the same company that made it). It's a
relief from the task oriented feed readers.

Pro tip: once you sign up you can import your websites from google reader at
planetaki.com/username/import (not linked yet because it's in beta).

------
kmfrk
I got back to using Bloglines, after I found out that Google Reader purges
updates older than a month. Bloglines was obviously not doing very well and
has had awful performance the last couple of weeks which has let me to try out
Fever. That is, if my server didn't crap out. Heck, I think Bloglines' beta
has been around longer than Gmail was back in the days.

For long, I've regarded the RSS reader market something missing some great
minds and ideas.

This also brings up the discussion of keeping your data online - not only my
subscriptions, but also my pinned updates - and what can be done about it.
This obviously can't be exported, sadly. Sometimes, I just want Apple and
Google to try to do everything so I at least know that I'll at least have all
of my data somewhere.

Speaking of back-ups and portability, Bloglines seem to have removed its
option to export the subscriptions as OPML in favour of XML. Can anyone verify
this? It's pretty annoying to say the least.

~~~
AngryParsley
Hmm? OPML is XML. To export your subscriptions, log in and then visit
<http://www.bloglines.com/export>. That URL is linked to at the bottom of your
feed tree, under the name Export Subscriptions.

~~~
kmfrk
Thanks. That's always something.

Seems the Beta version is already shut down, and all RSS updates and those
Pinned are already gone. Appreciate the heads-up from Bloglines.

------
JayNeely
I reluctantly switched from Bloglines to Google Reader a year or so ago when
it became clear they weren't improving their product any further.
Unfortunately, I've been just as frustrated with Google's lack of innovation.
And it seems like the new services I've seen (Pinyadda, feedingo) are focused
on dumbing down RSS for casual users rather than serving the needs of
information professionals.

I keep track of a lot through RSS. I'm subscribed to almost 500 feeds, most of
which are blogs and websites, with several that are search results or other
monitoring feeds. Managing my feeds and seeing which feeds are providing me
with value are my biggest pain points.

If there were a service that provided easy import from Google Reader (or an
OPML file), that provided analytics on the feeds I'm subscribed to (update
frequency, how often I read, how often I click through / save), good
organization of my feeds (labels, not folders, ability to mark as high
priority), and delicious-like saving / organizing of feed items, I'd switch in
a heartbeat.

~~~
brandnewlow
What would you pay for that though and how many people out there are in your
position?

~~~
JayNeely
I'd pay $20 / month for it. More (up to $50) if I felt it improved my
efficiency enough that I'm continually saving hours of time by using it
compared to another service.

How many people subscribe to hundreds of feeds I don't know, but any modern
journalist, industry analyst, political analyst, social media manager, or
executive advisor tries to stay on top of many sources of information, and
would find a tool that makes it easier to manage, optimize, & organize to be
invaluable.

------
gwern
> "In the long run, the utility of all non-Free software approaches zero. All
> non-Free software is a dead end."

\-- Mark Pilgrim, "Freedom 0",
<http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/14/freedom-0>

------
gregstoll
I used Bloglines for a long time, and finally switched away a year or two ago
after the lack of innovation and some frustrating problems got to me.

It's sad that Google is the only real game in town when it comes to web-based
RSS readers - anyone know of any others?

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alfredp
Here's what I want:

I just started using Instapaper recently - if there was an RSS reader
integrated, I can easily add stuff into my to-read list. (OR, bloglines can
integrate Instapaper into their reader - and that would also be hot.)

~~~
zabuni
<http://blog.instapaper.com/post/163849131>

This allows you to send items to posts in google reader.

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auxbuss
FWIW, a year or so back I switched from bloglines to the NewsFox plug-in in
Firefox. It does everything I need.

------
rubashov
So I'm going through my bloglines feeds and re-entering them into
feedingo.com. Apparently bloglines has been ignoring updates to over half my
feeds for many months. The other reader finds very recent updates just fine. I
had just assumed the feeds dead.

Thanks a lot bloglines. ಠ_ಠ

------
zackattack
who decided adding a captcha to the login process was a good idea?

~~~
jamesbritt
That was seriously puzzling. Bad enough the site seemed to forget who I was
(but only sometimes; seemed it depend on what URL I was using), but having to
do that stupid captcha thing each time was tiresome.

Still, I really liked Bloglines. I've several hundred feeds there, mainly
because it was so simple to add them and organize them. I tried Google Reader
but something about it was just annoying and clunky and wrong.

