Google reader is to die…..

This is not good news from my point of view – RSS feeds may be a bit ‘old school’ but I find it a great way to scan the news and any websites that I am interested in. And Google Reader served me well over the last few years as a way of aggregating all this data – that is until this coming July when Google are killing it.

RSS readers take raw feeds of data—headline, text, timestamp, etc.—and display that information in a stripped-down interface along with many other feeds, which is what makes them so efficient.

Now this is all very sad for people like me who like to keep an eye on things in an easy to scan manner, but the real problem is the effect it will have on countries that censor the Internet. Sadly Google are going to be cutting links to the outside world for many parts of the world.

Less obvious is how many RSS readers, including Google’s, serve as anti-censorship tools for people living under oppressive regimes. That’s because it’s actually Google’s servers, located in the US or another country with uncensored internet, that accesses each feed. So a web user in say, Iran just needs access to google.com/reader in order to read websites that would otherwise be blocked.

Not a good move Google…..

 

Another Google ‘duffer’?

As I have commented before I really like my social media and things – I keep up with the news via a combination of Twitter, RSS feeds and various news apps. But, in the main its the RSS feeds and Twitter that I find most effective, they provide a short headline that I can either ‘ignore’ or dig deeper on. All part of the ‘sound bite’ generation I suppose.

just not 'nice'

So as I blogged about earlier this week I was keen to give Flipboard a go when it came available for the iPhone and it did not disappoint. I am very impressed with it and find it as an iPhone app should be – very intuitive to use and smooth and ‘nice’ to use and look at.

I have been keen to look at Google’s effort in this sector of the market, it’s called Currents and was released a week or so ago – but only in the USA. I have no idea why Google always seem to do this. They are a global brand so you would think it would be possible to release things world-wide at the same time – but apparently not!

Anyway, I remembered that I have a US login for iTunes that I have used previously to access things like this via the US iTunes store. So after a quick reactivation today I downloaded Currents to have a play.

My initial reaction was that it is quite a good attempt at bringing a magazine style experience to this type of feed – and if Flipboard had not been there it might have been quite impressive! But it just does have the same feel as Flipboard. It is not as easy to use or as pleasing to the eye. More importantly it doesn’t work as smoothly and consequently isn’t as ‘special’ an experience.

Particular annoyances?

• You have to swipe sideways to read more in an article rather than the iPhone ‘norm’ of scrolling down.
• It doesn’t show feeds with new stories differently from ones without
• It is like Google+ – not obvious to use

So will I keep trying it out? Possibly for a week or so, but unless I have an ‘epiphany’ I don’t expect it to remain on my iPhone long-term. Is it me or do Google lack a certain something when it comes to design these days?

 

Zeitgeist 2011: Year In Review

I am not a huge fan of Google – any company that has such a significant hold over us all can’t be healthy. However as a company with so much data and access to it they are able to put together a fairly impressive review of the year.

This is a typically ‘flashy’ multimedia tour of the year and is well worth a view.

The review can be seen here – enjoy.

 

Flipboard – the way forward?

one of the 'home' pages

I am a self-confessed ‘geek’ – I love the ability to access things on the road and particularly love social media and the available news and articles via RSS feeds and the like. As such I am always on the look out for some form of aggregator to pull together a number of my ‘feeds’ into one place.

To date this has proved difficult and I have had to use separate apps for things like Twitter (Tweetbot which is great), Facebook (their own app) and news feeds (Byline – another great app), they all work fine but I have now found Flipboard which brings them all together in a very clever and ‘pretty’ manner. This youtube clip explains it really well.

an example of a tweet

I have not switched totally yet, but it all looks pretty promising so far. It is well worth a look, as the way you flip pages is just amazing. The presentation is also rather cool – it is more like a magazine style with pictures. That makes it sound a bit ‘simple’ but as you can see from the attached pictures it makes for a much richer and interesting experience. I for one am sold on it and hope that it develops as time goes by to include even more services – like LinkedIn for example.

news story - tap to read

I am aware that Google have just launched their take on this in the USA (why only there?) and it’s called Google Currents and it would I am sure pull down my Google Reader feeds really well (i currently use Byline). I also assume it would show them in more of a ‘magazine’ view (like Flipboard). However, my big reservation here is that it will be made to link to Google+ and not Facebook – and I really dislike Google+ so this will probably stop me trialing it when (or if) it finally becomes available in Europe.

Flipboard is well worth a look (and its free) – if nothing else it shows how user-friendly and visually exciting apps can be! This has to be the future!