One nice thing about great new technology is that if it’s truly game changing, someone else will do it.
Take Google Reader, f’rinstance. For reasons kin only to the hallowed halls of Google, they changed the look and behavior of their News Reader. Mind you, i was using them because previous to that i was using a Firefox Plugin, and Reader allowed me to coordinate news reads across multiple devices. Kind of like how using IMAP for mail allows you to only have to read mail once.
This was handy. i was a bit oogy about giving an advertiser like that so much info, but hey, i was getting enough value out of it that it equaled the cost. Or at least it did so long as i was able to follow some of the more interesting folks that also used Reader. That kinda ended recently.
Fortunately, the esteemed Les Orchard also felt the pain and pointed out that i could run tiny tiny rss which lets me use RSS like IMAP and centralize how i deal with the personal information tsunami. But what about the social aspect? Well, turns out that can be addressed as well.
When i share a link, i don’t expect it to last very long. (All i have to do is run the freshness script against the RHOD links to see how fast link rot sets in.) So, a site like Twitter is fine to publish that kind of ephemeral cruft. That’s why i created a JRsLinks account that’s my personal dumping ground. To publish links, i use the new and improved Firefox Share plugin. There are other plugins for other browsers you can use, should you so see fit, or just use a bookmarklet.
There’s even a client for ttrss for android that works pretty well. (that last is from mookie. It’s nice having smart friends.)
So, in essence, with the change, i realized i don’t need gReader anymore. (Well, other than for Podcasts, but even there i might be able to move to a better solution.)
Thanks Google!
