Withdrawal

Day one with Feedly.

I survived.

Many of you are saying "What in the Wide Wide World of Sports is Jeffro talkin' about - the damn fool?!?"

Feedly is an aggregate news reader. Google had one until today, known as - imagine this - the Google Reader. Many of us loved it, but they decided to give it the axe. A$$holes.

Just to get technical here - most blogs and news sites have RSS or some variant (like Atom) of a feed whenever a new post is put up. So, when I post something new, Blogger software sends out an RSS feed on a specific web address. Software that checks on those specific sites can then use that information to inform a subscriber that a new post is up - thus the feed reader.

When you follow much over fifty blogs, it's far easier to use a feed reader than it is to check each blog manually, because you and I both know lots of blogs may not update for days or even weeks. Using a reader bypasses all that, and you don't have to visit the blog to see updates. Using a reader actually freed up a lot more time so I was able to keep track of more blogs. Good deal all around.

And Google Reader was simple, effective, and user friendly. Alas, no more.

Google Reader was a specific website of Google's that one had to sign in to read - the advantage there was that you could sign in on ANY computer anywhere and read the blogs with new posts.

Feedly is not Google Reader. It is, however similar, but it is now a piece of software in my browser - an extension. I'm sure I'll still be able to access it from a different computer, but I'm not sure yet. Plus, it doesn't automatically update as often as the old Reader did. I haven't played with the settings enough to know if that can be changed. For now, manual updated is ok, I guess. I liked the layout of Reader better as well, but this will work.

Rumors are that Google killed off the Reader in order to push us all more into Google+, a service I've never completely warmed to. I'm on it, but I'd bet I haven't logged on in more than a month. And many in the geek world feel this was a terrible error, including Facebook, who is rumored to be working diligently on a feed reader that would be integrated into their services. Facebook will gladly take on the Reader contingent.  Google never monetized the service, which means they didn't have ads. You can bet your bippy the "free" replacements will.

Another thing I had to do was clean out all the unread posts I'd accumulated in Feedly. I'd had it downloaded and integrated into my browser some time ago and continued to use Reader. Well, according to Feedly, I'd never read about 2500 posts. So, I had to go to each blog and manually "mark all as read" to clean it up. Took about five or ten minutes.

So, I mourn Reader, but I figure I'll survive. And yes, I do realize this all marks me as a major geek, because 95% of you out there could give a rat's patootie about RSS, feeds and blogs. So what, I say.

I do, and that's the way it is, July 1, 2013.