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Alternatives to Google Reader (Part 2)

7/28/2013 11:06:37 AM

Desktop Readers

Desktop-based standalone RSS aggregators may be out of fashion, but they still pack a punch and are indispensable to the die-hard RSS ninja. While some of these offer Google Reader sync, they all let you import your Google Reader subscriptions in an XML format and offer the advantage of being able to read your feeds even offline.

FeedDemon (Windows)

One of the most popular desktop-based RSS apps, Feed- Demon is a Windows application that offers every possible feature you could ever want, with support for sharing, tagging, folders, customizable keyboard shortcuts and switching between different “views” for a better reading experience. While the application’s strongpoint was its Google Reader sync, it can work perfectly well as a standalone news aggregator. Check it out here: http://www.feeddemon.com/

Download and install FeedDemon 4.1 to stay on top of your feeds

Download and install FeedDemon 4.1 to stay on top of your feeds

RSSOwl Feedemon (Win/Mac/Linux)

A cross-platform news reader that works on Windows, Linux and Mac (it’s written in Java), RSSOwl should suit you fine if you want a unified experience across all your desktops. It has support for password protected feeds, multiple tabs, an embedded browser, sharing to multiple social networks at once and “News Bins” that let you store your favorite articles for later reading. Check it out: http://www.rssowl.org/download

Liferea, Akregator and Newsbeuter (Linux)

Liferea (http://lzone.de/liferea/) is a GTK-based RSS aggregator intended for use with the GNOME desktop (though it should work perfectly fine on KDE), and is quite similar to FeedDemon on Windows. It has a bare-bone, stripped down interface, but lets you store feeds offline, share to multiple sites and has a folder-based hierarchy. The downside is that Liferea has been riddled with stability issues, and tends to crash under the weight of more than a few dozen feeds. Akregator (http://akregator.sourceforge.net/download.php) is the KDE equivalent, and should be an ideal replacement if you’re a fan of KDE. It’s considerably more stable than Liferea, so GNOME users can also give it a shot.

On the slightly geekier side is Newsbeuter (http://www.newsbeuter.org/download.html), a CLI-based news reader that can import your Google Reader feeds and display them in an curses-based interface. If you’re looking for a lightning fast and dead simple way to scan your feeds on Linux, Newsbeuter might just be a fit!

Set up IFTTT recipes to push news items to Pocket

Set up IFTTT recipes to push news items to Pocket

Creating Your Own Service

If you’re looking to flex your DIY muscles to find a Google Reader replacement, here are two options.

IFTTT

IFTTT is a powerful web automation tool that lets you push data between different web apps by connecting them together. One such IFTTT “recipes” can push new items from an RSS feed to Pocket (https://ifttt.com/recipes/9733) or Readability (https://ifttt.com/recipes/77). Pocket and Readability both format the articles by stripping out irrelevant web content, and present the text in a clean, reader-friendly format. You can read these articles either on the Pocket / Readability website or any of their mobile apps that exist for virtually every smartphone platform.

As an alternative, you can even make IFTTT email you items from an RSS feed, and then set up filters in your email client to automatically tag and sort incoming email.

RSS2Email

If you’d rather avoid using a separate web service to connect your various services, RSS2Email is a nifty little program available on Windows, Mac and Linux that, as the name suggests, will email articles from any RSS feed/s you specify. It uses Feed Parser to strip out irrelevant web content and emails a text-only view to your account. Here’s a short tutorial to give you an idea

RSS2Email

RSS2Email is a nifty little program available on Windows, Mac and Linux that, as the name suggests, will email articles from any RSS feed/s you specify

First, tell RSS2Email where to send the email:

r2e new user@example.com

Start adding feeds:

r2e add <feed url>

You can as much as you like.

To check for new stories from your list of subscriptions, run

r2e run

To automate it, use the Task Scheduler (Windows) or Cron (Mac, Linux) and run this last command at an interval of your choice. Every time RSS2Email finds a new feed item, it will send you an email with the content of the feed. Creating filters and labels within your email client will actually let you recreate a Google Reader experience right within your inbox! Check it out here: http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/download/

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