Newsblur / Feedly / etc - status update?

[Mark Otway]

Hey Mariano and devs

Just wanted to check in re the status of closed-opensource NR project.

What's the target platform going to be, and what are the plans? Last I heard on-list is that the intention was to:

1. Abstract the sync engine out

2. Build a plugin for one of the back-end services

3. Allow others to provide back-end sync plugins for other services

I was under the impression from previous conversations that Newsblur was going to be targetted first, but that you guys were also 'in conversation' with Feedly about possibly supporting that too, as a second platform.

Is this right? Or are you concentrating on Feedly 100%? And are any of the developers looking at Newsblur at all?

I want to know because it'll affect what I do next. Feedly is a complete non-starter for me, as it's blocked internally within my company, and its UX/workflow completely sucks from a large-volume-of-articles-per-day perspective. Whereas Newsblur follows the old GR workflow almost to the letter.

If you guys *are* targetting Newsblur, then I'll sit pretty and be patient, on the basis that what I need will be fulfilled at some point in the next few weeks/months.

If, however, you are targetting Feedly, and Newsblur isn't currently on the roadmap, then I need to make a call as to which reading platform I want to move to. Also, if nobody is targetting Newsblur, I may even take the extreme step of getting myself a netbook, joining the dev, learning how to write Android code, and having a stab at that myself. Or, I may look elsewhere for offline Android reading options. Or I may think about ditching RSS altogether, changing my habits to get my content from twitter, and adjust my commuiting behaviour to watching movies instead (I have several series of GoT to work through which will keep me quiet for 4-6 months).

Would it be possible to have a status update from you and the devs involved in the project as to the following:

1. What conclusions you've come to about the practicality of any evolution of NR

2. Whether the plugin model is something you're attempting - and if so what plugin(s) are on the horizon for which back ends

3. If the plugin model is not feasible (or just not of interest) which platform(s) are going to be supported with the rewrite/upgrade.

4. If it's too early on and you haven't actually come to any conclusions yet, that's fine too, but would be good to know.

I don't want to put you under pressure, but a little communication on what options/pathways are crystalising would do wonders to your fans/users. Perhaps a brief blog post might be a good answer to save the repeated "what's happening with NR" posts that crop up on the list every 2-3 days?

Cheers

Mark

[Mariano Kamp]

Hey Mark.

There is no decision on the target platform. I *personally* believe that if we want NewsRob to have a future we need to carry over as many users as possible with as little friction as possible. So to me this means feedly. Also feedly is supposed to be very close to the GR API. From NewsBlur we already know that it is not.

However as I am not the one doing the actual implementation work I leave this up to the ones who do. They haven't made a decision yet. Since roughly a week we have access to the feedly documentation, but I haven't heard a conclusion yet. 

Specifically Travis is up and running and did no. 1 from your list above. He also looked at NewsBlur.

Henrik is also setting up NewsRob and wants to contribute.

Other than those two there are no active developers that intend to contribute code.

On the other hand, if you decide for yourself you want to contribute, but you only want to work on a NewsBlur adapter, you're welcome to join.

In summary: at this time and looking at the current speed it doesn't look to me like we will have a successor in place by 1st of July. However it is still possible. 

But we need to keep in mind, that implementing an adapter to another provider is only part of the task, handling the migration will also not come for free, e.g. a user needs to be guides to the new provider, re-authenticate, etc. To support that work is necessary here too.

And again, feel free to join the developer mailing list. There is a more information about the current state than there is here. At least what I described above is available there.

Best,

Mariano

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[Travis Tabbal]

I haven't uploaded it to git, but I have a really basic API layer ported over from the official Newsblur client building into NR now. I have only set up authentication and pulling a feed article count. They don't have a very sync friendly API, it's missing the ability to download articles that arrived on the server after a particular timestamp. They don't intend to add it either, so whatever. I can work with it, but that's a bit irritating. The reason I like this approach, is the code to translate from web-based API to Java is already there, and that's my least favorite bit to write. :)

As for feedly, it has some similarities to GR, at least from studying the code. It's not like GR is/was an open API, so the source is all I have to learn from. There are enough changes that I'm not convinced it's similar enough to re-use the existing code. At least, not from my level of understanding of the code flow at this time. They also changed some bits about the return data, so the existing parser isn't as helpful as one would wish.

I've been swamped with real life, but hope to get back to NR tonight.

[Mariano Kamp]

On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Travis Tabbal <tra...@tabbal.net> wrote:

They also changed some bits about the return data, so the existing parser isn't as helpful as one would wish.

Do they still deliver an atom feed? That would allow the parsing of the responses to be very similar. We should continue this bit on the dev list.

 

I've been swamped with real life, ...

I know the feeling.

[Madox]

http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/17/digg-rss-reader-june-26/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

Another alternative ? Digg?

[James Sorenson]

According to Newsblur, the API is fully open-source.  If it's missing a vital feature, it will probably be easier to get it for NewsBlur than Feedly:
http://www.newsblur.com/api
In any case, Newsblur does support Atom feeds, so the work-around may be a quicker choice.

I'm tossing my vote in for Newsblur.  They have a real business plan, and I like their web interface better. Besides, if Feedly suddenly needs to support their free model with ads, then they'll go the Twitter path and choke off the 3rd-party clients so that they can force their users to their own clients with the ads displayed.  Which, come to think of it, is what Google is doing as it pushes people to Google+.  Developing support using APIs of free services seems risky these days.

That said, you'll be able to support a lot more potential customers if you support Feedly, though.  Either way, I'll be joining whatever service NewsRob supports.  It is still, by far, the most effective reader on my phone!  Heck, I'll buy it again, if necessary.

- Jim

[Mark Otway]

Sounds absolutely awesome, Travis. I'm so excited about this - thanks for the work you're doing, and let me know as soon as you need beta testing. I've signed up for the premium newsblur service, so if you want me to put a little pressure on Samuel Clay let me know what you need. He's constantly trying to lighten his server load, so it sounds like a date-targetted query would fit in that goal...

[Mariano Kamp]

Just on a sidebar. I don't see this as either/or. Just what comes first.

I think if we have a low friction migration path available at the 1st of July we can keep users otherwise ...

Written on a mobile device

[pent...@gmail.com]

I would like to contribute to the development, where is the dev group, and who should I contact.

Pentium10

[Travis Tabbal]

I would think a date query would lighten the server load, as I wouldn't be downloading data I already have. Unfortunately, he seems to disagree going from his comments when the issue was raised on Github. I don't think it will cause major issues for us, it just means a little more download bandwidth. I think I can do most of the searching by ID, so it's a few extra bytes per article, per sync call. It adds up, but probably less than 50k when all is said and done.

I've pushed up a first draft of the sync client for NewsBlur, it doesn't do much yet, so no need to test anything, but I'm pulling feed lists and starting to integrate the data into NR's database. Right now, it's not very user-friendly, you have to set it up via the newsrob.debug file. If a developer has some time and doesn't want to work on sync stuff, they could grab that as low-hanging fruit. If not, I'll get to it once I have some basic sync functionality working. I'd really like to get something in the next week so we have some closed beta testing time. We'll see. I have limited time to work on it.

I know the free version of NewsBlur has some limitations, but it's really cheap, and you can try it for free. I still have just the free version. I come in under the feed limit, though the low sync rate will probably push me to buy it. As Feedly is currently free, that's a little nicer for users. But they could be stuck when Feedly decides to charge, and they have stated they plan to. Hopefully, we can get more developers going and someone is willing to do Feedly. If someone else doesn't do it, I might take a crack at it after I've stabilized NewsBlur and done a little UI work.

[Travis Tabbal]

Mariano posted an agreement of sorts a while back. Email him directly that you agree to the terms and I'm sure he'll add you to the list. Please post what you're working on to the list, so we don't duplicate effort. I've been trying to post updates any time I push changes to github along with what I plan to do next, just in case someone wants to contribute code along the branch I'm working in.

Oh, you would need to agree to the Feedly NDA as well. Mostly just not to publish any details about their tech till they launch, I guess July 1? It's pretty basic stuff, so no big deal IMO.

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 12:49 AM, <pent...@gmail.com> wrote:

I would like to contribute to the development, where is the dev group, and who should I contact.

Pentium10

--

[Travis Tabbal]

On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 11:41 PM, Mark Otway <ma...@otway.com> wrote:

1. What conclusions you've come to about the practicality of any evolution of NR

2. Whether the plugin model is something you're attempting - and if so what plugin(s) are on the horizon for which back ends

3. If the plugin model is not feasible (or just not of interest) which platform(s) are going to be supported with the rewrite/upgrade.

4. If it's too early on and you haven't actually come to any conclusions yet, that's fine too, but would be good to know.

1. Work is progressing and I hope we'll be able to get something out before the cutoff. It's a really tight schedule for a side project though. I'm seriously considering taking a day or two off from the day job to really push some code out. My wife might kill me for that though. :) As I get more familiar with the NR code architecture my velocity should increase.

The fully isolated plugin, allowing for sync engines that are not built directly into the NR codebase is not planned for July. It might still happen, but it's a somewhat complex undertaking and we simply don't have time right now. Personally, I'd like to see it, and think it might be fun to write, so hopefully. :) Right now, I'm targeting Newsblur. I hope we can get someone else going on Feedly. It would be really nice to have 2 choices out of the gate. Unfortunately, I think I'm the only one that has a self-build running. I actually use it on my phone every day, to try to catch any bugs I manage to introduce. Though I'm still using the GR sync engine for daily use.

[Alan J Robertson]

That sounds encouraging, Travis - please keep up the great work, you and all the others on the dev list!!

A.

PS - definitely take a couple of days off to work on it, you know it makes sense ;)

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[Mark Otway]

I disagree.

Take a whole week off, and that way you can get it really polished with a week to spare before the GR shutdown. I'm sure your wife was only joking. ;-)

[Alan J Robertson]

Hehe you make a very cogent argument, Mark :P

A.

[Travis Tabbal]

Indeed, how can she argue with logic like that? :)

Thanks for the laugh guys.

[CareyZ]

Keep up the good work!

I am trying out both Newsblur and Feedly and look forward to having either one or both work with Newsrob before Reader gives up the ghost...

Thanks again!

[Henrik Heimbuerger]

I was holding back and hoping the situation would change, but the last week was crazy and the next week I'll be on vacation, so it's very unrelaistic to assume that I'll manage to help out Travis in any way before the GR shutdown, sadly. :(

Henrik Heimbuerger
http://henrik.heimbuerger.de/
https://twitter.com/hheimbuerger

[Mariano Kamp]

I think we should be talking to Travis' wife. Always best to directly talk to the person in charge ;)

Keep it up Travis. Your work is much appreciated. 

[Mark Otway]

Is the problem that Henrick and Travis's wives need to meet? They'd be distracted and both their husbands could crack on with the development work. :-D

[Mariano Kamp]

Lol. Maybe we should setup a donation page to fund their meetings? Win, win, win...