Newsblur : a good substitute to Google Reader ?
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:58 am
In an ideal world, all services would implement the Google Reader API. https://github.com/ViennaRSS/vienna-rss/issues/160
But we are not in an ideal world. The July 1st deadline is just 3 months ahead, and while almost everyone is rushing to implement the Google Reader API, we haven't seen yet an implementation that we can beta-test with Vienna.
And I doubt that it is anyone's priority to support non paying users who would access their servers with ad-free RSS clients.
So, this being the Easter week-end, I considered other manners of resurrecting feeds syncing… ;-)
For my personal use, I installed a copy of Tiny Tiny RSS. Not very difficult, but definitely not for the average Vienna user.
Tiny Tiny RSS has an API, but apparently, a single Androïd client uses it. There is a "digest" plugin and a web app for smartphones who can decently handle iPad and iPhone though.
Implementing Tiny Tiny RSS support in Vienna seems feasible, but there are a few fundamental differences between its API and Google's.
I then searched other APIs we could consider. I found Feedmin, then Fever and wondered : would Vienna users fork money to access these services ?
And it came to my mind that I don't like that all these APIs use internal ID numbers to reference feeds and articles. It is a potential source of problems when you decide to switch to another service.
I then rediscovered the NewsBlur API, and found out that it has the advantage of referencing articles by their URLs. This is interesting for implementing a lightweight solution, limited to syncing, letting each client fetch articles directly from the original source. À la Brent Simmons.
[url=http:/]Newsblur.com[/url] use is free as far as you don't exceed 68 feeds. This would fit my personal needs : I currently only have 11 feeds that I want to sync with mobile devices ; my other feeds are local to Vienna only. For people wanting to follow more than 68 feeds on the go, 24 US$ a year seems reasonable. If you are tech-savvy, setting up your own installation is perfectly doable : the project is open-source, under a MIT license.
All in all, a good product which seems to be able to attract multiple categories of people. So I consider focusing my efforts on supporting it.
Your thoughts ?
But we are not in an ideal world. The July 1st deadline is just 3 months ahead, and while almost everyone is rushing to implement the Google Reader API, we haven't seen yet an implementation that we can beta-test with Vienna.
And I doubt that it is anyone's priority to support non paying users who would access their servers with ad-free RSS clients.
So, this being the Easter week-end, I considered other manners of resurrecting feeds syncing… ;-)
For my personal use, I installed a copy of Tiny Tiny RSS. Not very difficult, but definitely not for the average Vienna user.
Tiny Tiny RSS has an API, but apparently, a single Androïd client uses it. There is a "digest" plugin and a web app for smartphones who can decently handle iPad and iPhone though.
Implementing Tiny Tiny RSS support in Vienna seems feasible, but there are a few fundamental differences between its API and Google's.
I then searched other APIs we could consider. I found Feedmin, then Fever and wondered : would Vienna users fork money to access these services ?
And it came to my mind that I don't like that all these APIs use internal ID numbers to reference feeds and articles. It is a potential source of problems when you decide to switch to another service.
I then rediscovered the NewsBlur API, and found out that it has the advantage of referencing articles by their URLs. This is interesting for implementing a lightweight solution, limited to syncing, letting each client fetch articles directly from the original source. À la Brent Simmons.
[url=http:/]Newsblur.com[/url] use is free as far as you don't exceed 68 feeds. This would fit my personal needs : I currently only have 11 feeds that I want to sync with mobile devices ; my other feeds are local to Vienna only. For people wanting to follow more than 68 feeds on the go, 24 US$ a year seems reasonable. If you are tech-savvy, setting up your own installation is perfectly doable : the project is open-source, under a MIT license.
All in all, a good product which seems to be able to attract multiple categories of people. So I consider focusing my efforts on supporting it.
Your thoughts ?