Beyond Google Reader: CommaFeed

Shawn Powers — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 20:44:25 +0000

Now that Google Reader is officially gone, most folks have settled on a replacement of some sort. In fact, a few months ago I even went through the process of installing Tiny Tiny RSS as a viable and powerful replacement. At the time, there was only one feature I sorely missed, the "next unread blog" link. Approximately three days before Google Reader shut down for good, I found the holy grail of RSS readers: CommaFeed.

CommaFeed is an open-source project written in Java. It's offered as a free Web-based solution at https://www.commafeed.com. Although the interface is similar to Google Reader, it feels slightly stripped down. Thankfully, it provides a bookmarkable link that will take you to your next unread RSS entry. That feature is the single most important, and difficult to find, RSS reader feature I need.

CommaFeed unfortunately doesn't have a really good mobile interface, and it's lacking features in its Android app, but improvements are being made on both fronts. I must admit, however, that even more important than the "next unread blog" link feature, is the ability to download the https://github.com/Athou/commafeedsource code from GitHub and compile CommaFeed for self-hosting. I don't ever want to get "Google Reader'ed" again. Hosting is complicated, because it's a Java application, but the instructions on the GitHub site make it fairly painless. I recommend trying out https://www.commafeed.com before compiling and self-hosting, because CommaFeed's interface might not be for everyone.

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The Google Giveth

Shawn Powers — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 20:33:32 +0000

by Shawn Powers

And the Google taketh away. So it is with Google Reader. A while back, Google discontinued its Google Wave product, because it never gained traction as a social-media platform. This surprised approximately zero people. More recently, Google announced it would be closing Google Reader on July 1, 2013. Far more people were surprised, myself included. In this article, I want to explore some options for those left in the lurch.

Those Clouds Look Ominous

I think even more interesting than Google eliminating Google Reader is the collateral damage it's doing to cloud computing in general. Reader is something I've used for years, depended on in fact, to keep up with the Web sites I find interesting. Google Reader is a program I'd happily pay for, but since it's free, I've always just counted my blessings and moved on. Now that it's disappearing, my dependence on free and/or cloud-based services is weighing heavily on me. Today it's Google Reader; will tomorrow be the end of Dropbox? Flickr? Google Mail?

Since Google's announcement regarding the demise of Reader, I've visited SourceForge and Github more frequently than I have in years. I don't like Google being able to affect my day-to-day computing so dramatically on a whim, and so I've been working hard to make myself less dependent on services like Google Reader. This is the first in what I expect might be a series of articles on self-sufficiency in this cloudy new world.

Web Shmeb

The simplest way to avoid losing your cloud-based solutions is to avoid Web-based services altogether. Before the original Web applications like Bloglines and Google Reader came about, people were perfectly happy with standalone RSS readers. Many folks still use a standalone application, and if you tend to browse the Web from the same computer all the time, a standalone application might be the perfect solution.

Liferea is a Linux-native application that does a nice job of managing RSS feeds. Like almost every other RSS application, it syncs with Google Reader, but thankfully, it also syncs with Tiny Tiny RSS (more on Tiny Tiny RSS later). Because it has the ability to sync with a back-end database, Liferea can provide the best of both worlds—namely, a local application for browsing RSS feeds, plus syncing with a common back end for reading on other devices and computers. Liferea has a simple interface, but if you want to burn through your RSS feeds, simple is good (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Liferea is simple, but that's not a bad thing.

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