Save the Reader!
A signature campaign was carried out by fans of Google Reader to stop it from shutting down. Although their efforts were futile, the campaign still saw more than 100,000 people signing in.The 1st of July 2013, marked the death of someone who's been a trusty friend and companion to scores of people around the world; someone who, at the tender age of 8, scaled great heights, and showed a lot of promise. Before you rack your brains, and sift through the newspapers to figure out who am I talking about, let me tell you that I'm referring to someone who once used to be Google's favorite child―Google Reader.
While the shutting down of Google's popular RSS reader was not the end of the world for most people, it did sadden a lot of ardent Reader fans. Nonetheless, like they say, "Life goes on ...", people have moved on to other sources to get their daily dose of RSS feeds. If you are looking for an application to fill in for Google Reader, the following list should help you along.
Website: Flipboard
One of the most popular RSS reader apps in the market today, Flipboard is a worthy substitute for Google Reader, and, in many ways, a major upgrade to its mentor. The GUI of the standalone app is one to behold, and features a cool, flip transition to read another feed. There are various categories that you can choose to get feeds about, in addition to feeds about your Facebook friends (if you choose to link your FB account with the app). All feeds show up as a thumbnail with a brief about the feed, clicking on which, you can get further information about it.
Website: Feedly
Feedly makes for an excellent reader with minimum fuss. It has a very minimalistic layout, and resembles Google Reader in most aspects. Anyone familiar with Reader's UI would feel right at home with Feedly. It lets you add feeds from you favorite sites, and rolls out the latest news to you real-time from the site. The main page displays a grid of new headlines, and tapping on any one of them brings up the entire news feed. You can also select a category of your interest from the main menu, and read only relevant news. You can customize the appearance of the app to display the headlines as cards, or have an image from the feed show up.
Website: Digg Reader
A simple reader. Digg Reader might not wow you with a great interface or fluid screen transitions, but it gets the job done. Like most other reader apps, it displays the headlines of your favorite feeds, and you can tap on them to read their synopsis. To read the entire article, the app redirects you to the site from where the feed was drawn. Digg Reader lets you mark an article as unread, and you can even choose to display only the unread posts. It also offers you the basic functionality of subscribing to feeds from various major sites, sorted out under different categories.
Website: Pulse
Pulse is a very refined and beautiful looking RSS feed reader. You can login to the app by creating a username, or you could choose to link it to your Facebook account. The app features a gorgeous, grid-style interface, which displays an image from a feed along with its title. You can choose to scroll through the various categories which feature feeds from major websites, or you could manually subscribe to feeds from you favorite websites. The app stores the feeds that you open onto your local drive, so that you can choose to view them offline.
Website: The Old Reader
True to its name, The Old Reader chooses to keep things simple, without bringing in too many fancy elements. The app is almost identical to Google Reader, and so are its basic functions. You can choose to login to the app with your Facebook ID, and share news feeds with your friends. Feeds are displayed almost like they would in a newspaper, and scrolling through it is fairly easy. The app currently supports more than a dozen languages, with more languages rolling in soon.
Google Reader ushered in the dawn of a new age of reading news, and getting updates about your favorite topics without the need to look through different sites. Although Google Reader has since been discontinued, its legacy is being carried on by other apps which have become an absolute rage amongst the masses.
