Monday, July 15, 2013

I need a good RSS reader!

I'm heart broken that Google Reader is no more. I loved that RSS reader. I mean, I wanted to marry it and everything. It was perfect and worked so simply. I have been so upset that I shied away from anything RSS since. Now, after being in mourning and weeping near constantly, I'm finally feeling the desire to begin dating another RSS again. After playing around with a few, I realized that I actually had a few needs that must be met. They're not many, but they are required.
  • It must be available in the cloud so I can access it from my pc, my Galaxy phone and my Kindle Fire. This also means that it requires an Android app for my Galaxy and my Fire.
  • I need to be able to rename Feeds. For example, Fox News has a boat load of individual feeds. However when I add certain feeds, it is automatically named "Fox News". NOT HELPFUL! When I want to only read the "Digging History" feed then I have to click through all the feeds named "Fox News" until I finally figure it out. Screw that! I want to just be able to rename the stupid feeds so I will right away know what the frick it is.
  • I need to be able to organize feeds into folders.
That's not a lot to ask, is it? Then why is so freaking hard to find what I need?! My first attempt was the popular Feedly, the one with glowing reviews. Feedly met all the criteria. It has apps, it lets me rename them and it organizes things into folders. Great. So I give it a spin. The problem is that I cannot keep that account separate. That is, I must link it to another account. I'm now not even sure what account I linked it to originally. There is nothing anywhere that says what account it's attached to, so when I go to log in on my phone or my KF, it says "sorry, there is no record of that account." REALLY?! Why can't I have a simple Feedly account and be done with it?!

The next one I tried is Pulse. Visually Pulse is stunning but that's about where all the love ends. Since I cannot rename feeds, Pulse is automatically disqualified. I cannot for the life of me understand why this is so. It is obvious that they have put a lot of time and effort into it's visual appeal, but to glaringly ignore the most important function speaks volumes to me. Sorry, but Pulse is then trash in my opinion.

Another one I found was gReader. My little three requirements seemed like peanuts compared to its rich list of features. Well, that was until I realized that you can't freaking view it on your pc. Seriously?! You can't freaking view it on your pc?! I couldn't believe it. WTF? That would be my dream app, but too bad it sucks for not being viewable online.

Now RssDemon is another app that initially sounds heavenly, like gReader. The problem though is the same with gReader. There is no pc support. Additionally, it looks as though the app has been abandoned. The last post at its website is way back from February 2012 and it's last app update was also February 2012. No thanks.

NewsRob is also finished, so there is no point in even discussing it.

There really are no further apps worth mentioning. The rest have basically the same features.

It's really too bad that there isn't a perfect one out there. I'm just saddened by the fact that gReader limits itself to an app only utility.

I guess for now I'm stuck with the very basic and archaic Feedly... unless some of you out there have better suggestions.

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