I must admit I’ve been thrown off my blog reading by the demise of Google Reader, closed July 1 with only a few months warning. I remember when Google’s was the newest member of the RSS reading options. Its simple interface and relatively-solid performance eventually won me over and its competitors gradually stopped innovating and finally closed.
In the last few months other services have taken up the challenge of replacing Reader, but it’s been a chaotic process and a gamble which would be rolled out in time. One of my go-to programs, Reeder, now works for the phone but not the Mac app. It runs off of the Feedly service, which I now use in the browser to access my feeds.
I rely on these blog reading services to keep track of over 100 blogs. RSS may not be sexy enough to be a mass-market service but for those of us whose temperments or hobbies run toward curation, it’s an essential tool. As the new systems mature, I hope to keep up with my Quakerquaker reading more thoroughly.
