Going... going...

[ganimede]

As the half dozen of you who use Google Reader are no doubt aware, Google announced recently that it would be closed down on July the 1st, sending a veritable shockwave of indignation across the internets. Apparently not enough people were using it which is probably Google-speak for 'we weren't getting any money from it'. Certainly the amount of

Comments

[ftmichael]

It really is annoying. I think you're right about lack of money being the reason for the shutdown. And there's been a lot of indignation from the nerd herd so clearly a lot of people were using it. So irritating

[ganimede]

GReader never had ads on it and no ads = no revenue.

I haven't exported anything yet. I thought it just exported the feeds I was subscribed to. I was intending on going through each tag I'd set up and going through each item individually, deciding if I was keeping it and if so where, then opening it in a new tab and saving it that way.

Why do I need to back up my bookmarks? I'm not doing anything with those. If all the items I've starred or added are in a .json file then I can upload that straight to Delicious. Doesn't need to touch Firefox.

[ftmichael]

*nods* Exactly. In that sense I'm kind of surprised it lasted as long as it did. Maybe they'd planned to introduce ads eventually.

Hrm, going through them the way you'd intended might be the easiest way to do it. I don't know if exporting them and going through them another way would save any time or trouble really. But it does export All the Things, just so's you know.

Oh, I didn't realise you could uploade .json files to Delicious! That saves a lot of time and trouble then. I'll do that with mine too. :) Although some of them will probably wind up getting shifted over to Pinterest.

[ganimede]

I don't know where they would have put ads, there wasn't any real room for them.

It might be easier doing them that way but it would certainly be very very lengthy. I'm not sure it does export All The Things. The .json files are labelled followers, following, liked, notes, shared, shared-by-followers and starred. I don't see anything there that would include the tagged and saved items I have. Which is the one thing I really do want.

I presume Delicious takes .json files. The import page just says to 'use the browser export bookmarks option' and if Firefox bookmarks are a .json file, maybe all browsers are. You can give each imported file a tag so I'll probably tag mine reader-liked, reader-shared, etc. At least that way I'll have them all in Delicious in case I don't have time to go through them before July

[sullen_hearts]

It's weird really because how much upkeep can it take?

[ganimede]

None, because they've never really done anything with it. It was introduced properly in about 2007 or so and then in 2011 I think it was they removed the share feature because they brought out Google+ but that's all that's ever been done to it. It's never been upgraded or had new features added or anything. They pretty much brought it out and never bothered with it again!

iGoogle is being got shut of as well, although that's not till November and there's been over a year's notification on that. I don't know why Google Reader is being dispatched so quickly with only 3 months warning.

[polkadotsquared]

I exported my Reader feed whatevers with some Google Takeout thing and tried The Old Reader, which is apparently based on a previous incarnation of GR. It took them 2 days to add my feeds and it doesn't arrange things how I like them. Have uninstalled the add on for that. Now I'm still using GR and am annoyed that I'm still going to have to do something about it. Will have to keep searching.

Of course if I actually got a job then this whole problem would disappear, as it's only available jobs from across the web that comes to it.

[ganimede]

There's been hit and miss responses to The Old Reader. A lot of people were in favour of it initially because it was based on Google Reader before they removed the share feature. But now, most people are not impressed with it because of the length of time it's taking for the site to import stuff. Apparently it's controlled by just three people and I think only one of them does the actual coding so it's all very small really. I also saw a comment from someone who said they use a different font stack to what Google use on Reader which renders it illegible on Windows so this person contacted the crew on TOR to suggest changing the font stack and was told to fuck off. Which puts me off them a bit.

You're lucky you only use it for jobsearch, I use it a lot and have done for several years so I really want to find a good replacement for it :-/ The other alternatives that seem to be quite popular are Feedly, NetVibes and NewsBlur although the latter has suspended free accounts at the moment. Maybe one of those might work for you?

[polkadotsquared]

The font was fine, I was just used to GR's layout of new as arrived, they had it as new by feed. Didn't know it was that small though. Does make sense though.

Anyway, I've just been in the Chromestore and feedly looks like what I'm used to, so I've set that up to test. And it helps get me to not use igoogle as much since that's going soon.

[ganimede]

I was trying out Feedly this evening and it was doing okay but it suddenly started to use huge amounts of RAM and CPU. I'm not sure if it was anything related to the amount of feeds I have because I do have quite a lot but it might be something worth being aware of.

If you're wanting to replace iGoogle too, you might want to take a look at NetVibes/Bloglines as that has a similar widget interface to iGoogle. It has the option of switching between the widget one or a reader one. NetVibes is having a few issues at the moment because of the amount of people switching over to it but it could be promising.