So it seems google will be shutting down one more free service, this time it’s the rss feed reader and the Caldv access to google calendars. While closing a free service that they probably couldn’t monetize is something I don’t mind much (also I wasn’t a big user of reader). it’s not the first time a free nice service closes (eg remember delicious ?). I’ve tried since the delicious issue to avoid free services for things I rely on. If I use a service that’s free, I need to be able to hack on it - so I can’t really depend on those web services. If my blogs go away - fine. If my videos go away I’m fine with that too.
I’m more concerned about the caldav going away, that locks some data to google services only and that’s pretty bad.
For those of you using rss and needing a replacement, I’m pretty sure you’ll find free services here and there - it’s not like reader was the only rss reader online. But if you think that the same story might happen with your new rss reading provider, maybe you could think about trying Thunderbird’s RSS reader :
- It’s not the best RSS reader on the planet.
- The UI is not ajaxy nor so sexy - but it does the job most of the time.
- Best of all, the source is available and you can fix it, hack it.
- Use extensions to make it better.
- It’s maintained by Alta88 on his free time.
Now what you’ll need to do to switch from Google reader is to get the opml feeds from reader and import these into Thunderbird. The procedure to export the opml feeds is described here : http://googlesystem.blogspot.nl/2008/07/export-feeds-from-google-reader-folder.html.
To import in Thunderbird you’ll first need to add an RSS account , by File -> New -> Other acounts -> blog and news feed. This will create a nice blog and news account , which will be empty. click on it (eg the line in the column on the left with the rss icon) and then choose manage subscriptions. Then click import and choose the opml file created earlier. You’re done !
