After several weeks of teasing me for burying my head in the sand and stubbornly refusing to transfer my Google Reader RSS feeds elsewhere, the Beloved quietly confessed last night that he has given up on Feedly and moved himself back to Reader, too, for the time being. Once I was done milking the required apology for his weeks of mocking, I asked him why, and found that he had reached the same conclusion—that in the battle between interactivity and linearity, linearity is sometimes the better way. Here's what he didn't like about Feedly: It was too dynamic for him. Every...

Feedly has been steadily gaining users (over three million since the announcement of the death of Google Reader), and they just updated both their mobile apps and their browser plugins. So far I'm happy with the changes, which make the experience a little closer to Google Reader. The best changes in the browser version include the ability to set a title view in your subcategories (not just in the Latest view) and better integration with Pocket. When I reviewed Feedly a few weeks ago, the Save to Pocket button didn't work. Now it's flawless, just as it should be. I'm also pleased with...

By Stephen Silver Google, as you may have noticed, discontinues stuff all the time. But when it does, my life is usually minimally affected. Remember Google Wave, which was supposed to revolutionize communications? I couldn’t tell you to this day exactly what that was or what it was supposed to do, and I just sort of shrugged when Google killed it in 2010. Google Viewer, Google Checkout, Google Health, GOOG-411, Froogle, Knol… these were all things I rather never used, or used once or twice and decided they weren’t for me. That’s part of what makes this week’s announcement of the impending...

I was finally able to register with Feedly last night to give it a try. Most of the day they'd been down, but they added server capacity and were running well later in the evening. So far, I think it'll work for me. Setting up the account was easy. I signed in with my Google account, and they imported all my feeds. They have assured users that the transition will be seamless in July. If they achieve seamless, I'll be impressed. Tech doesn't always work that way. If they manage "not too painful" for the first day or two, I'll be...

Well, that was fast. Digg announced yesterday that they are building a Reader replacement. Apparently they’ve been planning it for a while—they're just moving it up the priority list. Good for them! I’m liking this part of the announcement: We hope to identify and rebuild the best of Google Reader’s features (including its API), but also advance them to fit the Internet of 2013, where networks and communities like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and Hacker News offer powerful but often overwhelming signals as to what’s interesting. Don’t get us wrong: we don’t expect this to be a trivial undertaking. But we’re confident we...

The announcement of Google Reader’s shutdown has caused developers of other RSS readers to prepare themselves for an influx of users. Feedly happens to be one of those developers. Feedly revealed on its blog that it has been preparing to deal with Google Reader’s eventual closure for awhile. The fruits of its labor is a Google Reader API clone it's been referring to as project Normandy. When Google Reader goes away on July 1, Normandy will make the transition super easy for any Feedly user. Feedly told GigaOM it’s possible for other developers to use its cloned API just like Google’s official API. “Our goal is...

We've all heard by now about the upcoming death of Google Reader. Our own Chris Meadows, in his write-up, has even thoughtfully offered some alternatives for those who, like me, are suddenly scrambling to fill the void. But to my surprise, reactions around the Web have been decidedly mixed. Many, like me, had that first 'OMG!' reaction, but then on second thought, weren't too sad at all. Some even saw it coming ... For instance, in this write-up at GigaOM, one of Google Reader's own creators says the writing was on the wall from day one: 'When they replaced sharing with +1 on...

There is a risk to relying on cloud services, as I’ve found to my chagrin time and again: they may not always be there when you need them. Etherpad servers have crashed, taking the only copy of my writing with them. Web-based IM service Meebo shut down, leaving me scrambling to find a replacement. And now comes the latest blow: Google plans to close down its Google Reader RSS reader service (along with a number of other, lesser-used services) as of July 1. I used Google Reader exclusively to find stories to reblog when I was writing more actively here—I would...

After Henry Louis Gates, Jr., an African-American Harvard professor, was erroneously arrested for breaking and entering, Barack Obama spoke up. The President at first overdid his criticism of the police, but in the end played the meritable role of peacemaker, inviting both Prof. Gates and the arresting policeman to the White House for a “Beer Summit.” In time, Sgt. James Crowley even gave Prof. Gates a pair of the handcuffs used on the professor. Now President Obama should help make peace in a separate Cambridge case and consider another “Beer Summit”—in fact a whole series—between copyright lobbyists and America’s librarians, educators and consumer activists. Dead in the copyright...

The New York Times today announced it is embarking on a program which will make its content available through various third-party services, starting with iOS (and, since last week, Android) social media aggregator Flipboard. The program will make all NYT content available to subscribers via login validation, while a selection of articles will be available free to everybody. New York Times webmaster Denise Warren said that the paper had embarked on the program after realizing 20% of its subscribers use third-party software like Flipboard to read content, and saw it as an opportunity to enable additional functionality for paying...

Why is it that so many methods of driving traffic and, hence, ad views to news web sites have the side effect of annoying readers? On SF Weekly, Dan Mitchell talks about a recent statement by the president of the Washington Post that awards don’t matter, and he wants more slide shows. Slide shows are a cheap way of driving up the number of page views on your website, as they basically make the reader click through ten, twenty, however many slides there are, pages at a time, with a new ad displayed on each page. ...

PaidContent reported a few days ago that the Associated Press has branched out into digital distribution by making content available through tablet-based reading apps Pulse and Flipboard. The AP is not providing the readers with all its content, but making available “a selection of international and national news and associated images.” This will include special coverage focusing on this year’s Presidential race, in both cases. Given the AP’s past parsimonious behavior, I find it a little funny that it’s taking so readily to social newsreading apps that will let their users share AP content with their friends and on...