My Love/Hate Relationship with #Google - Take 2

A couple days ago I posted my frustration with Google and losing both Google Reader and iGoogle. I mentioned a couple of places that I thought I'd try as replacements. Here's what's happened since then.

First, today there was a post on c|net: Google Reader has expired, but your data lives until July 15. That's good news for anyone who didn't realize that ti was going away and needs to retrieve their feeds for importing into another service.

I had wanted to try Feedly but over the weekend I couldn't get to Google Reader and ended up exporting my feeds from The Old Reader where I had imported them as soon as the first announcement was made. Unfortunately, Feedly will only import directly from Google Reader and Google Reader is no more. I suspect they will be allowing a direct OPML import soon.

On my other computer I had used RSSOwl for quite a while and liked it. I had just gotten seduced by having Google Reader on my iGoogle page and had neglected it. While The Old Reader was adequate, it was almost too simple. It also seemed to be slow in picking up new blog posts.

So I headed off to download and install RSSOwl on this laptop. Well, to make a long story short, it needed a Java installation. I broke down and installed it. Still wouldn't work. After several frustrating hours I gave up and uninstalled the whole thing.

I started searching for another stand-alone RSS reader and found GreatNews. Easily installed, easily set up, everything imported easily including my folders. Sweet! 

There are a lot of other alternatives, try them and see if they work for you. Everyone is different in what they want or need. GreatNews works for me but may be terrible for you.

Here are two PC Magazine articles to help: The Google Reader Shutdown Survival Guide and 9 Great Google Reader Replacements

Now, on to my iGoogle replacement. For the last year I've had both my iGoogle page and my MyWay.com custom page open in my browser. I used them both daily. With the demise of Google Reader, I had no real reason to continue with iGoogle, which is disappearing in November anyway. There were things I liked there that I couldn't do on my MyWay page.

So as I posted, I tried two alternatives. NetVibes and ProtoPage. I spent an hour or so on each, setting up my custom page, picking and choosing the feeds I wanted (news, health, technology, etc). I customized the colors, dragged and dropped the content until I liked the placement.

I kept both pages running over the weekend. As often happens, there were things I liked on one that I couldn't do on the other. And there were operational things I liked on the other that I couldn't do on the one. In the end NetVibes won. The good news it that I now have one less tab running in my browser.

Once again, what works for me may not for you. Some folks like the Flipboard.com approach. I use that on my Kindle but find I only use it when I'm bored. I like a concise headline type approach and both NetVibes and ProtoPage provide that. 

So jump on in, you've got nothing to lose but some time!

A love hate relationship with #Google

I admit it. I have a love/hate relationship with Google. I was an early adopter, quickly changing to Google as my search engine after years of poor search results from Yahoo!, AltaVista, Lycos, DogPile and more. When I got a chance to be a beta tester for Gmail, I jumped in with both feet. Then came the calendar, how wonderful! When I entered the blogging world, Blogger showed me the way. Of course then I needed Google Reader to read all my friends' blogs. Google Docs came next...I think you see the pattern.

Well, as Google brought out more new products that I loved and used, a little fear niggled at the back of my mind. "Are they going to become the next Microsoft? Am I becoming too dependent on them?" But I continued on, blinders firmly in place.

My first shock was the announcement that iGoogle was going away in November 2013. While I still used my personal MyWay.com page (which I transitioned to when Yahoo! ads drove me nuts), I had also grown to love my personalized iGoogle page. There was a frenzy of checking out alternatives, all put on the back burner because, well, November was a year away.

Then they announced that Google Reader was going away. Initially this wasn't an issue because I was using the standalone program, RSSOwl. But when I added an ultra notebook to my stable, it quickly became my primary laptop and since it had limited memory and hard drive space, I was back to reading blogs on my iGoogle page. Like others, I checked out the alternative all of whom were overloaded with people migrating their reader lists. I chose The Old Reader and migrated things over. BUT, it was still easier to read things on my iGoogle page so I continued to use it daily.

This morning I was in the middle of reading new blogs on iGoogle and suddenly I got an error message. The gadget no longer was valid. Sigh... Time to find a reasonable replacement for iGoogle. I ended up going back to NetVibes which I had tried initially but it seems to be much more fleshed out now. While my page isn't as clean looking as my old iGoogle page, it has all the basic information that I want and need.

So, have you replaced either Google Reader or iGoogle with an alternative? If so, what is it, how do you like it and how's it working for you?