Google Reader did the switch this evening — I have the new version that doesn’t allow or show shared items. I tried Google+ and didn’t like it. I don’t do Facebook. That was one feature that kept me with Google Reader, but now I’m off to find another blog reader.
If you have any suggestions for a good reader, or a way to share and read other people’s shared items outside of G+ and FB, I’m all ears!
I’m annoyed too. Don’t like the new reader. Let us know what you find!
Why the heck did they go and do that?
I’m interested in what you find. Years back I used to be with bloglines or was it blogreader, didn’t find it as easy as google, but they may have changed and I’m a little more tech savvy now. off to research too.
I used to use Bloglines, and was very reluctant to switch, but that was about 4-5 years ago? It’s work to switch everything to a new reader, but having lost so much, and not really comfortable in the new format (too much white space), it would be a good time to switch. Maybe I need to go to an approach like this? http://jenniferslinks.blogspot.com/ It just was so nice to have it all there in one place.
I’m with you.
I am annoyed too. New and improved? It’s new and scaled back. Please let us know what you end up using, as I do want to switch at this time.
I can’t imagine google would be happy with all bloggers using new blogs to keep their shared items, but it’s not a bad way to go. The problem is you have to do a lot more work than a click of the “share” button.
Boo google.
I think everyone must be annoyed. The new format is so ugly. I miss the shared items feature as it was such a handy way to access good reading. Drat and blah.
Annoying, too, because unless all the people I was following on Google Reader switch to the SAME place, it won’t be nearly so nice.:(
I am blissfully unaware.
I was catching up with all my blog reading when I read your post, Jenn. I read you through feedly and can’t recommend it enough! Check it out!
http://www.feedly.com/
The downside of feedly is that I need Firefox or Chrome. I didn’t upgrade to Chrome because I *Love* my tabs. Will I lose that?
Otherwise, I am ready to dip right in….
Oh dear – really? You can’t use feedly with other browsers? I like Chrome, but only use it because I was having so much trouble with Firefox. I know you can use feedly with Firefox, and you can keep all your tabs with Firefox, too. So…maybe just try using it with Firefox for a while to see what you think. You can still use your other preferred browser for everything else while you decide.
Love the way I can organize my reading with feedly, and I like that I can subscribe right from the blog (once you install feedly you’ll have this little shadow of a button which shows up on every page that you can read through a feed. It’s very handy to subscribe right from there!) And I prefer the clean, magazine-like look of feedly. It’s more intuitive and visually clean to me…but that could just be me!
It will keep all your subscriptions from your google reader so you won’t have to resubscribe to those.
Well, I did switch to Firefox, and I’m just thrilled beyond expectations. It’s running much faster than IE — maybe it’s because my Google Toolbar is gone? And I’m loving Feedly. There is an option to share, and I have my shared items in my sidebar. I can’t see where I can read other people’s shared items, which is the downside, but for now, I feel like I read my blogs again. This is visually cleaner and tighter and much more navigable than the new Google Reader.
I’m so glad you’re enjoying Firefox and Feedly, Jenn!!! YAY!!! As far as reading other people’s shared items, they just naturally pop up within your unread articles. At the end of the article, it will simply say, “article shared by Jen Mackintosh”. I love the collapsible, expandable feature that holds my place in feedly, and the look is very clean and streamlined to me.
I love saving certain blogs as favorites and organizing the rest by topic – so I can click through and read all my homemaking blog articles, or CM blogs, or Church news blogs – reading by genre, which makes much more sense to me than just reading chronologically.
I’m thrilled you’re enjoying it, Jenn!
Jen Mack
I’ve signed up for feedly, thanks:)
sounds good but I’m struggling to understand a few things.
1. How do you organise as you suggest? Sounds terrific.
2. Can I put a ‘shared feature’ gadget on my blog?
3. Okay so does it tell me when other people share the same article?
it did transfer all my blogs I read easily:)
Jenn, I switched from firefox to chrome and it was even faster. However stick with ff for now:)
Erin,
I’m glad you’re enjoying feedly! It is very customizable, really, and being able to organize blogs and their articles into categories is a HUGE help for me in my reading.
1) ORGANIZING YOUR FEED:
While logged into feedly, look up in the top right corner where it says “organize contents”. You can create categories here, drag blogs from one category to another, and even unsubscribe from blogs here.
The other way to organize is through the feedly mini toolbar. Once you install feedly, this little toolbar is represented by a small, shadowy gray button which appears in the bottom right corner of your screen. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about look down at the bottom of this page and you’ll see it. It’s very transparent and unobtrusive, but if you hover over it it will say, “feedly mini”. Now, lets suppose you have found a new kitchen garden blog and you want to subscribe to it. While you’re on the blog page, go to the little feedly mini button and click it. The top button with the diamond in it is the subscribe button – click it! It will immediately bring up a blue menu window with several options. You can subscribe to this blog as a favorite, or not. And from this blue window, you can assign a category to this blog, AND you can also create categories from this page. Nothing you do is permanent here. If you make a mistake once you’ve subscribed, just go to your feedly’s “organize contents” page and drag things around and make changes.
Once you’ve organized your blogs, when you go to feedly you’ll see your categories listed on the right sidebar and under each category, the blogs with articles available for you to read. Your favorites show up in your feed automatically.
2) I’m not sure about adding a “shared feature” gadget to your blog since I don’t do that, but I’d love to know if someone else figures it out. I’ve just never looked into it.
3) Yes, if both Jenn Miller and I share the same article, and you are subscribed to the articles we share, that article will automatically show up in your feed and at the bottom of the article it will say, “this article was shared by this person and this person.” I admit I don’t know much about sharing articles, though I’d like to look into it more.
Jenn – I apologize for taking up so much space in your comments when clearly I should just write a tutorial for feedly!
Glad you’re both enjoying it!
Jen, Thanks:)
Understand 3:), As for 2 if I find out I’ll let you both know.
Now 1. I can’t find the mini bar at all, but I’ve changed my colour (Jenn play around in preferences-at top right, you can change colour and get rid of most clutter on right sidebar) however I scrolled around hoping it would pop up but still nada.
re organising blogs, how can you add a tag if you already have blog in feedly? btw why do some blogs have tags already?
Jenn where are you? we’re having a chat here:)
I’m here, busy organizing my Feedly. What is nice is that whatever I’m doing in Feedly is changed in Google Reader, so if I need to go back, I’m not having any problems. I already cleaned up my sidebar, and I prefer to have my homepage as the Index (Erin, look in your lefthand top corner and there’s a little button to click to get to the home page). I changed my colors to simple gray…
Not sure what you mean by the minibar. There’s a little icon to the left of everything, and that brings down a sidebar of choices on the left. It’s still not totally intuitive — if I change my mind about something already “marked as read” I can’t seem to make it come back. I might need to change options so I can see everything, even if I read it, because I was used to that feature.
I’d like to see an example of shared posts. Perhaps we can all “share” one particular one so I can see Jen’s example. The downside is I want to find shared items from other friends of blogs I wouldn’t normally read, but a post is highlighted. Seems that little community feature is gone. We’re all back to navel-gazing.
I’m not communicating on the feedly mini button very well. It SHOULD have automatically downloaded when you installed feedly. It BECOMES A PART OF YOUR BROWSER! This small button does not appear ONLY when you have your feedly webpage open, is shows up ANYTIME you open any blog or feed-able page/site.
Do me a favor, just go to my blog, or any blog for that matter, and open it. Now, look down in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. You SHOULD see a little grayish-transparent button down there. ***THAT is the feedly mini button!*** Using this little button, you can, from any blog, subscribe to that blog’s feed.
So, let’s say that I link to a really neat kitchen potager blog (http://www.potagerblog.com/), and you both link to it from a link I share. You click around a little and you really like the blog and you’d like to subscribe to the blog. Don’t go anywhere…stay right on that page!!!! Look down….down in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. It’s very light/transparent so that it doesn’t obstruct your reading, but you SHOULD see that little gray button (the button has a rectangle with an arrow which originates in the rectangle and comes up out of the rectangle and points to the right), click that button. A little menu will scroll up vertically. Hover over the icons to see what they do, but the top icon allows you to subscribe directly to that blog, and you can organize it and assign it a category, decide if you’ll read it as a favorite, or not. Now that blog’s feed will show up in your feedly index.
*****************************************************
Back to Erin’s question:
Some blogs have tags/categories because they transfer directly from your Google Reader. There is a place at the bottom of an article’s feed in Google Reader that you can add/edit tags. That may be where they come from. The two (feedly and Google Reader) mirror each other so any change you make in one is reflected in the other.
This is a personal pref, but I don’t like one blog to live in more than one category, so I spent some time making sure I didn’t have duplicates. You may just need to spend some time organizing contents, Erin, and playing with it a bit. Did you both watch the tutorial on feedly? That’s very helpful.
Now…about sharing articles: Recently the little thumbs up button has disappeared and I can’t find it – this used to be the share (or like) button. If you thumbs-upped an article, it would appear as an article you shared. Now you can publicly +1 an article, but I’m not sure what happens (I thought it went to google +, but I +1′ed a couple of different articles and can’t find where it went. There are no shortage of social platforms on which to share articles (twitter, f/b, tumbld, G+), but I don’t see a way to just share articles through feedly any more. Maybe this was done away with on the last update? Maybe it’s a bug? Not sure.