Google Reader has been the standard for blog subscriptions via RSS feeds for the past several years. It was my reader of choice, along with millions of other people. However, Google has decided to discontinue this service, leaving users to scurry around hunting for a replacement. Most of you who subscribe to this blog via a reader probably already know this, but just in case, I wanted to warn you that as of July 1st, Google Reader will no longer be available.
All is not lost, however, since there are dozens of other feed readers out there. I have migrated my feeds seamlessly over to the free service Feedly without any problems whatsoever. It's a fairly simple procedure: login to Feedly using your current Google Reader name/password. This web page has details for the various web browsers. It's important that you switch over before July 1st for Feedly and many other services so that you won't lose your feeds and settings (and have to manually re-subscribe to each separately).
If you'd rather use a different service, Gizmodo listed "10 Google Reader Alternatives That Will Ease Your RSS Pain." If you don't want to lose your reader details but haven't settled on an alternative, you can download your information from Google Takeout.
These are the links referenced in the Gizmodo article above (note that most are free; some are not):
- Feedly
- Digg Reader
- AOL Reader
- NewsBlur
- The Old Reader
- NetVibes
- Pulse
- Zite
- Twitter (not a reader, but an alternative of sorts)
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