How About the News

[Scott Fringer]

So, how do folks here feel about Google's announcement of shuttering Google Reader on July 1, 2013? I for one am pretty bummed - GR has been a very convenient way for me to keep up on information at my pace.

[Corinne Peterman]

Considering I moved everything to Reader years ago and never looked back when I got NewsRob I am one unhappy techie right now.

Unbelievable.  And for those that didn't see the news:

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FdtKx+%28Official+Google+Reader+Blog%29

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Scott Fringer <sc...@fringer.us> wrote:

So, how do folks here feel about Google's announcement of shuttering Google Reader on July 1, 2013? I for one am pretty bummed - GR has been a very convenient way for me to keep up on information at my pace.

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[cmstlist]

Sad. GR together with NR has become part of my daily routine. I don't know if there are any quite so easy alternatives that work via web and Android.

[Alan J Robertson]

Ditto - the GR/NR combo works so darn well I don't know what I'm going to replace it with - really disappointed with this news :((

A.

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[Colleen]

NewsRob is probably my most used app.  I came here hoping folks had suggestions for what to use next.  Any chance NR might be updated to sync with another RSS reader?

-C

[Tim Wood]

Very sad

[Mark Otway]

Sucks. It's the app I use more than any other.

Alternatives?

[jesse...@gmail.com]

http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/

Here's the best alternative that I've found thus far. They seem to be willing to take on a lot by promising seamless transition with their newly announced Normandy API. Willing to work with 3rd parties as well. Hopefully NR can adapt for this.

[rcra...@gmail.com]

Seeing that NR has been stale for quite a while now I don't see something like this happening soon.

Even though the last update was posted on Jan 29th, the blog or Twitter feed (heh) hasn't been updated in years.

[Mariano Kamp]

Sorry, busy at my day job, so it will take until the weekend for me to be able to say something more detailed.

The short version is this: 

This is news to me. I need time to reflect on it.

This may be the end of NewsRob, but not the end of RSS. Google didn't do such a good job with GR over the last years, but took all the air out of the RSS space, so maybe now something better will grow.

I also have had no time to think about how I personally would want to deal with keeping up with updates in the future. Google+/Facebook/Twitter didn't work efficiently for me in the past.

Maybe it is not the end of NewsRob. As Jesse mentioned Feedly may offer an alternative backend, maybe others will step up too. I will look into that.

The three month period is a joke, but still it means that there is no need to make a decision today.

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 7:23 AM, <jesse...@gmail.com> wrote:

http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/

Here's the best alternative that I've found thus far. They seem to be willing to take on a lot by promising seamless transition with their newly announced Normandy API. Willing to work with 3rd parties as well. Hopefully NR can adapt for this.

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[Mark Otway]

There are other alternatives like @hivemined and theoldreader.com (which is overwhelmed at the moment) so hopefully some clarity will emerge on a dominant platform, and maybe we can get some mobile app lovin' - perhaps even from Newsrob. Should be interesting....

[laur...@gmail.com]

I tested some readers and Feedly is the best one so far... I have 2642+ RSS active subscriptions so other Readers just cant manage that amount of data to import. Feedly starting to work right away.

[Mark Otway]

To me, so far the best alternative appears to be newsblur - which has mobile client and desktop site...

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[jasont...@gmail.com]

http://blog.feedly.com/ Read newest post. They seem totally on top of it. I just signed up and it seamlessly synched up my feeds and looks beautiful. Haven't tried their mobile app yet, love NewsRob's mobile app its the easiest. NewsRob please don't die!

[Jens K. Loewe]

> http://blog.feedly.com/ Read newest post. They seem totally on top
> of it. I just signed up and it seamlessly synched up my feeds and
> looks beautiful. Haven't tried their mobile app yet, love NewsRob's
> mobile app its the easiest.

IMO Feedly is unusable.

[Mark Otway]

I agree. You can't view feeds through a browser without plugins (prohibited at my place of work). The mobile app isn't efficient for reading large volumes, and doesn't appear to support offline content.

Newsblur looks better but the offline problem still stands.

[Jens K. Loewe]

> and doesn't appear to support offline content.

At least this will probably change soon. When the new API is released,
there will be enough clients which cache items. :)

[Colleen Beaupre]

So far I've tried Taptu and Feedly and neither is working for me. Taptu doesn't have the ability to add "raw" RSS feeds which means most of my subscriptions won't carry over.  And Feedly doesn't seem to let me mark posts as "unread" or hide "read" posts.

I know the transition will be a bit annoying, but I'd really just like a simple interface without bells, whistles and "magazine" layouts.

-C

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[Oliver Kötter]

Am Donnerstag, 14. März 2013 07:23:22 UTC+1 schrieb jesse...@gmail.com:

http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/

Here's the best alternative that I've found thus far. They seem to be willing to take on a lot by promising seamless transition with their newly announced Normandy API. Willing to work with 3rd parties as well. Hopefully NR can adapt for this.

I also would like the Normandy API from feedly implemented. This should be compatible to the Google API already implemented into NewsRob, so I guess this would please many of use while Mariano has minimal work to do.

[Mark Otway]

Well, I think "minimal" is questionable. Firstly, does feedly even intend to make their Normandy api available for non feedly clients? And if so, migrating may be non trivial, depending on how decoupled the Newsrob code is from the APIs.

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[Mariano Kamp]

I already sent them a mail. We'll see.

If the API is compatible it would mean I need to only change the API end points, i.e. the URLs. Then there would still be the testing to do. Still depending on the test results that could be kind of minimal.

It would also mean that all end points need to be available that NewsRob uses, including authentication. Otherwise the adaption probably wouldn't be that minimal.

Written on a mobile device

[Peter Riocreux]

There is reason to hope they will let 3p apps access it, on <http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/> they say:

"Note 2: if you are a third party developer using the Google Reader API and would like to integrate with Normandy, please send an email to re...@feedly.com. We would love to keep the Google Reader ecosystem alive."

[Mariano Kamp]

As mentioned above I already sent them a mail a couple of hours ago.

But I think it'll take some time for them to come up with the details. I am sure they have other concerns at the moment. Google's decision sent a lot of attention and new users their way.

Written on a mobile device

[Thomas Harning]

TT-RSS looks to have the 'right' web UI to emulate Google Reader... there's the minor trouble of self-hosting and getting an API right.

http://tt-rss.org/redmine/projects/tt-rss/wiki

If Feedly gets the API right and shared with NewsRob, hopefully they also allow 3rd party web-apps or offer a more lightweight UI option.

[Alan J Robertson]

Thanks for emailing them, Mariano - as others have said NewsRob is fantastic, does the job that many others fail to do efficiently. If there's anyway we can just keep using it via a different API I'd be very much up for that, here's hoping their reply is positive and the workload from your perspective wouldn't be too onerous.

Cheers

Alan

[circ...@gmail.com]

Thank you for looking into the options for porting Newsrob to a new back-end.

I just looked on the Newsrob website to see if there was a PayPal button so I could donate some money in thanks for Newsrob, above what I've paid for the night mode view. 

Whether or not the port is a success, Newsrob has been a very valuable app to me since I've been using it, and on reflection I wanted to put my
money where my fingertips are. 

[Jay Carlson]

On Mar 14, 2013, at 2:20 PM, Thomas Harning wrote:

> there's the minor trouble of self-hosting and getting an API right.

I think it would be healthier for the feed ecosystem to have a self-hostable cache/state service. I can happily run my own servers, and then I don't have to depend on the benevolence of example.com to let me keep using their APIs, especially after they get bought out by Microsoft. I see your point that it would be good to have at least one public instance Mario doesn't have to pay for....

The webapp front end is another nice thing to have self-hostable, but in the case of NewsRob is not necessary.

Every now and then I consider just giving up and using a feeds->IMAP gateway; it gives me "mark read/unread" and "star" (aka flag). The good news is that the server and client don't have to try for full offline IMAP sync support-it's always been too hard, and "close" is sometimes worse than "don't bother". It's like that conversation from _Dune_:

"They tried and failed?"
"They tried and died!"

Come to think of it, UID-validity should not be an issue with an feeds->IMAP gateway....

Jay Carlson
n...@nop.com

[Jens K. Loewe]

>> there's the minor trouble of self-hosting and getting an API right.

feed.ly does.

[Jay Carlson]

Sure, but I can't "apt-get install feedly-server", right?

I can't tell on this phone since surfing there keeps on trying to launch a damn app.

It might be a decent de facto API standard though, you're right.

On Mar 14, 2013 6:43 PM, "Jens K. Loewe" <jens.k...@googlemail.com> wrote:

>> there's the minor trouble of self-hosting and getting an API right.

feed.ly does.

[Jens K. Loewe]

> Sure, but I can't "apt-get install feedly-server", right?

I wish anyone could so we could give it a sane UI...

[nick.w...@gmail.com]

I'm very unhappy! NewsRob was my most used app and has been for several years. The magazine style readers like flipboard have their place but newsrob was just so simple and to the point, it worked pretty much perfectly for me. I guess the only hope is that someone like feedly or Digg replicates the API successfully and newsrob will be updated to use them instead.

Damn you google!

[Falcon7254]

Glad to see Mariano's acknowledgment.  Feel his pain, let's give him time to reflect.  Go MARIANO!

[andrew...@gmail.com]

It's worrying how Google throws aside their services. Just weeks ago they chose to discontinue Google calendar sync, which I heavily depend on for my work calendar.

Now this. As previously mentioned, I don't care for magazine layouts (the Flipboard app, while beautiful, for me isn't functional) but NR with its quick 'mark read until here' or 'swipe to mark unread/swipe again to star' is superb. As a daily user, I'd be gutted to lose it, so I really hope we can keep the UI with a different back end. Fast, thoughtful, simple and functional.

Anyway, an interesting thread. One I'll check back on. Wonder if there's an RSS feed for it...

[bryn...@gmail.com]

I spent the larger part of yesterday to find an alternative. None works as well as NewsRob... Sad....

[Mark Otway]

Newsblur shows promise. According to his get satisfaction site he's going to implement offline caching once the impact from GR shutting down calms down.

On 15 Mar 2013 12:26, <bryn...@gmail.com> wrote:

I spent the larger part of yesterday to find an alternative. None works as well as NewsRob... Sad....

[212...@gmail.com]

Mariano, thanks for an amazing app -- easily the best newsreader on any phone in my experience, Android or iOS. I use NewsRob every day without fail, and strongly hope some sync can be worked out with Feedly etc ...

[Vlad]

So if Feedly API is implemented does it mean I'll need to use feedly?

Feedly seem like complete opposite of NR. It's all about the looks and its a mess.. That is why I fel in love with NR in the first place - simple & minimalistic

How about The Old Reader (The Old Reader cooperation) cooperation? 

Those guys don't have an Android app yet and seem like one of the best alternatives for GR with API on the way

[Mark Otway]

You'd need to set up an account with feedly, but then would use Newsrob on your phone. I can't use Feedly on my work computer as we're blocked from installing extensions, and feedly doesn't work as just a page.

For me the big win about GR was the combination of mobile and desktop app, with the state syncing between both. So feedly wouldn't cut it because even if I could use it at work, I can't stand the UI.

Newsblur seems excellent from a UI perspective, and very much like an improved GR. If either of the existing mobile apps supported offline I'd be happy, but if Newsrob could support its api that'd be awesome too. Plus he has a sensible paid model ($1/month) so it's likely to be around for a while.

--

[Vlad]

Newsblur was bumped to 2$/month so..

And they have their own app for Android.

The Old Reader is way better choice

[Mark Otway]

Sam Clay, who develops newsblur, bumped it to $2 temporarily to slow down new registrations while he upgrades his server infrastructure to deal with the enormous influx after the Google announcement. He tweeted that it'll drop down again once he's got things under control (it's already a ton faster).

The app and the site are both open source and there are two apps already. There's no reason why there can't be 3 or more (think how many GR clients there are....).

[Mark Otway]

Oh, and check newsblur out if you haven't. It's like reader, but in the 20th century. ;-)

[christophe...@gmail.com]

Just wanted to say that I love NR, thank you for making this great app. I use it mainly on my rooted nook touch (only runs android 2.1) and I hope something can be done with a new API to keep the App around and working on 2.1. I have tried a few different readers the past few days and the old reader seems the best to me, but no API yet (though this is a priority).  I just purchased the pro version only a few weeks ago and really hope that something can be done to get my $6 worth. 

[Russ VDW]

I second this comment.  I'd gladly pay for NewsRob again if it would word with a different hosting service.  I've tried a ton of Google Reader clients in my day and nothing comes close to NewsRob for reliability and efficiency.  I'm not sure I could use another client without (at a minimum) the "swipe left" / "save for later" action and the "swipe right" / "mark read" action.

Excellent application.  Another vote for a new back-end (if you have the time, of course).  If there's anything I can do to support the effort let me know!

Russ

[Andrew Vevers]

Russ VDW +1.

[Michael Cluff]

Yes!  What Russ said.  

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[Mariano Kamp]

Hey guys.

Let me start with saying that I meanwhile had some time to process the news, but unfortunately I can't really make a decision at the moment.

I was surprised to see Google shut down Reader. It was clear over the last years that it didn't get much love anymore, but I thought that Google had deep enough pockets to keep on humoring this particular audience. Alas this is not the case. 

It made me think about my relationship with Google. When I started working on NewsRob at the end of 2008 I was a Google fanboy and was under the impression that they could do no wrong. Meanwhile I still have the highest respect for Google, but see them in a more realistic light.

This awakening does have real life impact for me. I would not leave Gmail behind me, but when Google recently launched Drive I stuck with my paid Dropbox account. And in general I can see more value in *not* integrating services too tightly and in one hand. More specifically I left the Bloglines plumber for Google Reader, because it was a Google product, not because Bloglines didn't do a good job. In fact their product was more feature rich. In retrospect that wasn't a smart move.

We saw what the dominance of IE did to web development/web standards a couple of years back and we saw how Google's dominance took all the air out of the RSS market.

Still leaving NewsRob out of this for the moment, I believe losing a stagnant Google Reader will be better for us in the long run.

When they're gone there will be air for other services and the use cases that is close to our heart, a rich newsreader app, will likely be much better supported. Google's model was always based on the idea to use a web app, no matter if it was the real web app or the official Google Reader Android app, that is basically a web app.

Elevating apps to first class citizens will give use new and more efficient use cases. For example we would get delta syncing that combined with a push server side infrastructure and pubsubhubbub would allow for instant delivery of news from the publisher right to your device with no loss of efficiency.

For me personally Twitter, Google+ and Facebook do help me staying in touch with friends, but don't get the job done to keep up with my information sources. Also my interests are so specific that I don't want my social network to filter the news for me.

Hence for my use I will keep on using RSS.

I woud prefer an app like NewsRob that focuses on that use case, going efficiently through a lot of news, no newspaper style.

Unfortunately the development of NewsRob is really slow at the moment and that I still don't have a table version is embarrassing. But I just can't spend more time on NewsRob for the time being. Mark already mentioned that I now have a life ;) That might be partially it, in particular that I am more focused on my health and sports, but mostly this is about a new day job that is very demanding and I don't see it slowing down over the next months. 

Most of the week I am travelling and find no time at all to care for NewsRob development.

Having said that it is not likely that I would be able to work on adapting a new backend for NewsRob, because that usually is a lot of work, specifically testing it.

As mentioned by me before, if one of the new backends comes out with a compatible backend where I just need to change the host names I would certainly do that however. For the moment, I haven't seen any specifics from Feedly or The Old Reader. I sent a mail to Feedly to register my interest and we'll see what happens. Too early to tell.

I think the most sensible thing would be to find another app that mostly does what we need and ask for the rest to be implemented. 

I do very much appreciate all the questions and support I received over email, this mailing list, twitter, google+, facebook and even google talk. Sorry for not being more responsive, but it's just not in the cards for the moment. And I also won't be able to be responsive during the next week due to extensive travelling. 

Within those restrictions I will do what I can to help the migration. So please keep discussing the alternatives and let's keep an eye out for the emerging backend alternatives and we'll see then what makes sense. I could think of extracting the offline support in NewsRob, i.e. the downloading of web pages, and contribute it to the other app we're choosing. Just thinking aloud here, please don't keep me to specifics. The extraction is also work and the receiver may not be able to integrate it. Just an example.

Best,

Mariano

[Francois Brutsch]

As well as TheOldReader and Feedly, I'm currently testing a different,  radically minimalist approach: skimr.co - in fact currently they don't have the basic functionnalities we would expect (folders, toggle between oldest first or newest first, mark all as read, show all posts / unread posts, and sharing tools), but they told me they intend to implement them.

It would be wonderful if NewsRob could continue with Feedly or Skimr!

[Tiberius]

Just a drop in this sea of comments. NR has been my most used app for the last 3 years as it gave me what I needed most: clean interface and offline support.

For the last couple days I've used Feedly through a wifi connection and I couldn't catch the hang of it. Maybe I need more time to get used but won't be the same.

I need offline access and for now I can't find anything. It is a shame :(

El divendres 15 de març de 2013 12:26:51 UTC+1, bryn...@gmail.com va escriure:

[S 'Dis' McCarthy]

My biggest problem with feedly is that it doesn't maintain ordering.
I'll read a category back to yesterday, leaving 2-3 unread for later,
and when I come back it has updated a feed and inserted entries in the
middle instead of putting them all after those 2-3..

That is a dealbreaker for me :(

I hope that someone comes up with a reasonable alternative. I'd even
go back to TTRSS if it had app support and so forth..

[Jay Carlson]

On Mar 17, 2013 2:44 PM, "Mariano Kamp" <marian...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I was surprised to see Google shut down Reader. It was clear over the last years that it didn't get much love anymore, but I thought that Google had deep enough pockets to keep on humoring this particular audience. Alas this is not the case. 

The Reader userbase has a lot of "influencer" users. They're not as visible as bloggers or Twitterers, but focusing on the 1 or 100 in the 1:100:10,000 can be misleading.

My lingering question is whether this is a "strategic" decision for Google rather than strictly financial.

> It made me think about my relationship with Google. When I started working on NewsRob at the end of 2008 I was a Google fanboy and was under the impression that they could do no wrong. Meanwhile I still have the highest respect for Google, but see them in a more realistic light.

One unexpected place their sharp turn has taken them is increased recruiting costs. Some of the people they'd like to have working for them are not purely responsive to cash (they can be comfortable a lot of places) and hard-to-quantify halo effects already in play for influencers are unusually clear if you talk to these people.

But I don't have a 767 in my garage, so I don't have the extrinsic credibility on assessing relative value and cost.

The response curve is pretty discontinuous though. Apple banning apps written in Flash (but not similar ones in Lua) was a last straw for me: they made up a bunch of technical BS to explain why they were not acting in my interest. Adobe had accumulated vast empires of bad karma, but iOS went into the same "so many bastards, so little time" pile.

Anyway, Newsrob (despite its lack of page up/down keys...) is a huge percentage of my screen time, far more than Google Reader itself. I agree that the IE effect was in play, but until sharing was nuked, I had little to complain about. Gonna be interesting. An old cliche is that there are no good USENET readers because all the people who really understand the problem space are too busy reading news to actually implement anything.... :-)

[rfde...@gmail.com]

If I might throw in my 2 cents... It'd be spectacularly awesome if NewsRob synced with Tiny Tiny RSS. The fact that it's an open source, self-hosted solution would mean that no company could just unilaterally shutter it. They also have an API and their own (limited) open source mobile app.

On Thursday, March 14, 2013 4:23:44 AM UTC-4, Mariano Kamp wrote:

Sorry, busy at my day job, so it will take until the weekend for me to be able to say something more detailed.

The short version is this: 

This is news to me. I need time to reflect on it.

This may be the end of NewsRob, but not the end of RSS. Google didn't do such a good job with GR over the last years, but took all the air out of the RSS space, so maybe now something better will grow.

I also have had no time to think about how I personally would want to deal with keeping up with updates in the future. Google+/Facebook/Twitter didn't work efficiently for me in the past.

Maybe it is not the end of NewsRob. As Jesse mentioned Feedly may offer an alternative backend, maybe others will step up too. I will look into that.

The three month period is a joke, but still it means that there is no need to make a decision today.

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 7:23 AM, <jesse...@gmail.com> wrote:

http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/

Here's the best alternative that I've found thus far. They seem to be willing to take on a lot by promising seamless transition with their newly announced Normandy API. Willing to work with 3rd parties as well. Hopefully NR can adapt for this.

--

[Mark Otway]

How would a self-hosted platform make any sense for Mariano to build support for? The number of people who'd self-host would be tiny.

[rfde...@gmail.com]

It's just a suggestion. I know I'd be on board. I'm going to tt-rss come hell or high water now. I'm not putting my data in the hands of another company that could yank the rug our from under me with or without warning. Especially for a product that is as hard to monetize as an RSS Reader.

Also, who says he only has to have one sync backend? Plus, tt-rss has a decent sized following out there and there is a noticeable lack of quality mobile apps that sync with it (there's only two that I could find and, while they work, neither is better than NewsRob).

[Mariano Kamp]

Maybe it would make sense to them to offer a 100% compatible API?

[mado...@gmail.com]

I too would gladly pay to continue to use NR.

However, if it all falls through, would you consider updating the application to have the current Google Reader URL to be a configurable parameter?  That way it'll work for us until July 1st, and if all falls through and you're too busy with real life - we can possibly find an compatible alternative or roll our own by emulating the GReader API...

On Friday, March 15, 2013 4:18:05 AM UTC+11, Mariano Kamp wrote:

As mentioned above I already sent them a mail a couple of hours ago.

But I think it'll take some time for them to come up with the details. I am sure they have other concerns at the moment. Google's decision sent a lot of attention and new users their way.

Written on a mobile device

On Mar 14, 2013 5:58 PM, "Peter Riocreux" <peter.r...@cakes.org.uk> wrote:

There is reason to hope they will let 3p apps access it, on <http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/> they say:

"Note 2: if you are a third party developer using the Google Reader API and would like to integrate with Normandy, please send an email to re...@feedly.com. We would love to keep the Google Reader ecosystem alive."

On 14 March 2013 15:58, Mariano Kamp <marian...@gmail.com> wrote:

I already sent them a mail. We'll see.

If the API is compatible it would mean I need to only change the API end points, i.e. the URLs. Then there would still be the testing to do. Still depending on the test results that could be kind of minimal.

It would also mean that all end points need to be available that NewsRob uses, including authentication. Otherwise the adaption probably wouldn't be that minimal.

Written on a mobile device

On Mar 14, 2013 4:27 PM, "Mark Otway" <ma...@otway.com> wrote:

Well, I think "minimal" is questionable. Firstly, does feedly even intend to make their Normandy api available for non feedly clients? And if so, migrating may be non trivial, depending on how decoupled the Newsrob code is from the APIs.

On 14 Mar 2013 15:14, "Oliver Kötter" <oliver....@gmail.com> wrote:

Am Donnerstag, 14. März 2013 07:23:22 UTC+1 schrieb jesse...@gmail.com:

http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/

Here's the best alternative that I've found thus far. They seem to be willing to take on a lot by promising seamless transition with their newly announced Normandy API. Willing to work with 3rd parties as well. Hopefully NR can adapt for this.

I also would like the Normandy API from feedly implemented. This should be compatible to the Google API already implemented into NewsRob, so I guess this would please many of use while Mariano has minimal work to do.

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[Mariano Kamp]

Absolutely!

I will try to make it configurable by a config file (newsrob.debug) well in advance so that you can try it out beforehand. 

[CareyZ]

First a big thanks to Mariano and to NewsRob.

The App is a favorite that I rely on everyday and I would be very sad
to see it go, so i hope a solution can be found.

For myself, after I heard the news, I signed up for Feedly and also
exported / downloaded my reader data and OPML, which I then imported
into NetVibes.

So those are 2 solutions/ replacements that I am testing out now.

According to LifeHacker the top 5 reader replacements currently
include:

Feedly 65%
The Old Reader 17%
NewsBlur 7%
Pulse 6%
NetVibes 5%

http://lifehacker.com/5991272/most-popular-google-reader-alternative-feedly

Another (less reliable?) list/ ranking is here:

http://www.replacereader.com/

I think it would be great if you found another API to use with NewsRob
and I would likely follow your selection, so I could continue using
the App.

I hope you find a good solution or workaround.

I need my NewsRob and would be willing to PAY to continue using it.

Please save it.

Thanks Again!

CareyZ


On Mar 15, 3:02 am, Alan J Robertson <a...@alanjrobertson.co.uk>
wrote:
> Thanks for emailing them, Mariano - as others have said NewsRob is
> fantastic, does the job that many others fail to do efficiently. If there's
> anyway we can just keep using it via a different API I'd be very much up
> for that, here's hoping their reply is positive and the workload from your
> perspective wouldn't be too onerous.
>
> Cheers
>
> Alan

> On 14 Mar 2013 17:18, "Mariano Kamp" <mariano.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > As mentioned above I already sent them a mail a couple of hours ago.
>
> > But I think it'll take some time for them to come up with the details. I
> > am sure they have other concerns at the moment. Google's decision sent a
> > lot of attention and new users their way.
>
> > Written on a mobile device

> > On Mar 14, 2013 5:58 PM, "Peter Riocreux" <peter.riocr...@cakes.org.uk>

> > wrote:
>
> >> There is reason to hope they will let 3p apps access it, on <
> >>http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/> they say:
>

> >> *"Note 2:* if you are a third party developer using the Google Reader

> >> API and would like to integrate with Normandy, please send an email to

> >> r...@feedly.com. We would love to keep the Google Reader ecosystem
> >> alive."

>
> >> On 14 March 2013 15:58, Mariano Kamp <mariano.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> I already sent them a mail. We'll see.
>
> >>> If the API is compatible it would mean I need to only change the API end
> >>> points, i.e. the URLs. Then there would still be the testing to do. Still
> >>> depending on the test results that could be kind of minimal.
>
> >>> It would also mean that all end points need to be available that NewsRob
> >>> uses, including authentication. Otherwise the adaption probably wouldn't be
> >>> that minimal.
>
> >>> Written on a mobile device

> >>> On Mar 14, 2013 4:27 PM, "Mark Otway" <m...@otway.com> wrote:
>
> >>>> Well, I think "minimal" is questionable. Firstly, does feedly even
> >>>> intend to make their Normandy api available for non feedly clients? And if
> >>>> so, migrating may be non trivial, depending on how decoupled the Newsrob
> >>>> code is from the APIs.

> >>>> On 14 Mar 2013 15:14, "Oliver Kötter" <oliver.koet...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>>>> Am Donnerstag, 14. März 2013 07:23:22 UTC+1 schrieb jesse...@gmail.com
> >>>>> :
>

> >>>>>>http://blog.feedly.com/2013/**03/14/google-reader/<http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/>

>
> >>>>>> Here's the best alternative that I've found thus far. They seem to be
> >>>>>> willing to take on a lot by promising seamless transition with their newly
> >>>>>> announced Normandy API. Willing to work with 3rd parties as well. Hopefully
> >>>>>> NR can adapt for this.
>
> >>>>> I also would like the Normandy API from feedly implemented. This
> >>>>> should be compatible to the Google API already implemented into NewsRob, so
> >>>>> I guess this would please many of use while Mariano has minimal work to do.
>
> >>>>> --
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>
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[jeltz...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, 13 March 2013 23:17:49 UTC, Scott Fringer wrote:

So, how do folks here feel about Google's announcement of shuttering Google Reader on July 1, 2013? I for one am pretty bummed - GR has been a very convenient way for me to keep up on information at my pace.

 

Shock/horror (but no surprise) at Google's decision to abandon the Reader.

 

But I really, really, REALLY need an alternative that allows me to keep using NewsRob.  Love this app, use is every day, it is the most effective way to be able to both scroll headlines on large feeds and drill into detail where necessary.  Cannot live without it.  I tried Feedly, and it just isn't going to work. 

 

I for one am happy to support (i.e. pay for) a new NewsRob.

 

 

[Mariano Kamp]

I recently read on the fougrapi mailing list that there will another party besides feedly to work on a compatible service. I am offline at the moment, so will post a link late.

Btw. I also find Nick's post interesting (and sobering): http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/my-plan-for-feeddemon.html

Written on a mobile device

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[Mariano Kamp]

Here is the link: https://groups.google.com/group/fougrapi/browse_thread/thread/d81ae8145aa8e810

Please be aware that the only information I have of them, is that post and a 20 seconds look at their website.

However I am willing to make the end point's host + path configurable in NewsRob and write a couple of lines on what end points NewsRob uses and how you enable logging. That should also help with feedly if they really do provide an GR API compatible version of their backend. 

I'll do this as soon as I can, within the next two weeks.

[Falcon7254]

Woo Hoo!  I've used/loved NewsRob since its fairly early days and this is great news, I want NewsRob 'feeding me my news' in whatever forum works.  However, I think the 'sobering' part of Nick's post went over my head, when you get 2 seconds, explain some specifics to some of us non-techies, though I assume it's the part about RSS dying a slow death.   

[Mariano Kamp]

Well, it's sobering that he doesn't want to continue his reader, which is one of the founding apps of RSS I would say. Also his evaluation of the efforts to use another backend are sobering.

Or do you mean the PS? Here he means, I think, that there are apps like flipboard that use RSS as one of many sources and use signals and algorithms to highlight what may be interesting for you and present it in an accessible and fun way. As opposed to the "old school" way where the user looks at each feed and post individually and decides for him/herself how to approach the available news.

[Madox]

I will be happy to test it for you :)  And superfeedr does look pretty good.

Their 'pricing' seems reasonable, most of us will probably have less than 10,000 feed entries a month the rate is only a $1 per 2000.

[Mariano Kamp]

On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 11:43 AM, Madox <mado...@gmail.com> wrote:

I will be happy to test it for you :)

Thanks Madox. That sounds great.

I just published the NewsRob version where the API protocol / host is configurable. And here is a little documentation I put together for this purpose and for feedly. In particular useful to you should be the debug parameters at the bottom.

Use of GR API endpoints

=======================

All API calls contain a "client" parameter identifying NewsRob.

Parameters names with an asterisk may be passed in multiple times.

All end points are listed with their path, followed by the used parameters.

End points are listed in order of their relevance.

- MUST for all updates -

/reader/api/0/token, headers used: Authorization

- MUST, read work horses -

/reader/atom/, n, ot, xt, r=n

/reader/api/0/stream/items/contents, output=atom, xt, i*

- Updates -

/reader/api/0/edit-tag, parameters used, T, a || r, i*

- Exact syncing and incremental updates -

/reader/api/0/stream/items/ids, ot, n, s*(cummulative - incremental updates)

/reader/api/0/stream/items/ids, ot, n, s (exact syncing)

- subscription management -

/reader/api/0/feed-finder, q

/reader/api/0/subscription/edit, ac=subscribe||unsubscribe, s

- subscription updates, only used to check for renamed feeds every 24h -

/reader/api/0/subscription/list

Logging

=======

When the NewsRob process starts it looks for a file called newsrob.debug in the root of the sd card.

To reload the debug file after a change the NewsRob process needs to be killed.

The following three parameters would make sense to test another compatible API. The 1st enables logging to a file called newsrob.log in the sd cards root. The 2nd one will make the actual communication with the server and the used urls and their parameters more verbose in the log output. The 3rd is currently "https://google.com" and needs to be replaced.

debug=1

printCurls=1

apiProtocolAndHost=https://googleplusplus.com

The latter parameter is implemented from NewsRob 4.8.9-5 on. Not available in the Android Market. Instead you can grab it here: https://sites.google.com/site/newsrobapp/beta-program/newsrob489-5.apk?attredirects=0&d=1

[Mariano Kamp]

Some links for background on the API.

https://code.google.com/p/pyrfeed/wiki/GoogleReaderAPI

http://undoc.in/googlereader.html

https://groups.google.com/group/fougrapi

[Henrik Heimbuerger]

Does the newsrob.debug really go into the SD card's root? Wasn't it the newsrob directory, for legacy installations under /sdcard/newsrob and for new installations somewhere in the OS-dependent data, like /sdcard/data/data/com.newsrob or so?

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[Mariano Kamp]

The data from all normal operations is stored there meanwhile (still backward compatible reading from /sdcard/newsrob), but the debug stuff is outside of the work dir, so that you can mess with the work dir and still keep the log file and debug properties separate.

[Corinne Peterman]

Mariano-
Fyi, I'm getting a bunch of freezing and I'm having to force close with the new version. I'll try to do a debug to catch it later tomorrow for you.  It seems to be happening when first entering the app or when I refresh the content and once on starring an item in the feed list.

I'm in a Verizon Galaxy Nexus with 4.2.2. if anyone else is curious.

Cori

[Mariano Kamp]

Oh, that's not good. Sorry.

Did you upgrade from the Market version or from the previous beta?

[Corinne Peterman]

I upgraded from the previous beta.  Setting up diagnostics now.

--Cori

[Corinne Peterman]

I thought I had something for you as it happened again but it turns out when I created the debug file my autocorrect "helpfully" renamed newsrob.debug to newsroom.debug.

I'll try again later.

--Cori

[marian...@gmail.com]

It could be worse. Imagine a paperclip sneering at you “you will thank me later” 😉

 

Looked at the log, but unfortunately can’t find the cause. This is not unexpected because a force close brings NewsRob to a halt rather harshly.

 

However there may be another file created when you use “force close”.

 

The OS will create the file: /data/anr/traces.txt. Could you send this to me? It contains stack traces from all running threads and I can likely see where the app was hanging. Maybe this will help.

 

I think you need a file explorer, e.g. astro?, to find the file and then send it via gmail.

 

Written on a mobile device

 

[Corinne Peterman]

Maybe it is because I'm not rooted but my "/data" folder is "blank" or most probably not showing me anything I don't have rights to see.

--Cori

[Mariano Kamp]

I suppose you don't have the SDK on your PC installed? ;)

The latter parameter is implemented from NewsRob 4.8.9-5 on. Not available in the Android Market. Instead you can grab it here: newsrob489 5.apk | newsrobapp

[Corinne Peterman]

Actually yes, just horribly out of date and one or two phones ago.  Took me awhile to update everything but got the file will share with you but unfortunately it is all from today so I don't think it will help as I reverted to the -4 beta last night.

--Cori

[Madox]

http://blog.superfeedr.com/google-reader-compatible-api/

I am slightly disillusioned now with superfeedr :(  Partial replacement by end of June... some time to go yet!

[nick.w...@gmail.com]

I'm genuinely sad about losing Google Reader and just as importantly to me losing newsrob. I occasionally use flipboard and I've been trying to use feedly but am struggling to get on with it.

I'm a news junkie and newsrob is my most used application and like many on here the first I paid for, mainly to support Mariano not because the adverts bothered me that much. I love the speed and simplicity of the app, I really struggle with these stupid magazine formats, they have their place, but for power users simplicity is all! I know feedly is trying to simplify their UI (optionally) but they're just not simple enough for me yet.

I will add my name to the list of users who would be happy to pay again if I meant I could keep using newsrob.

Mariano, just out of interest, are there licensing reasons for not open sourcing it or do you just not want to do that?

[marian...@gmail.com]

Indeed. They made it sound before that they are already done and now they say end of June and not even with syncing. So Feedly seems to be the best option so far.

 

Thanks for looking into this though.

 

Written on a mobile device

 

--

[marian...@gmail.com]

Sorry to make you jump through those hoops.

 

Unfortunately - as you expected - the file you sent didn’t contain anything on NewsRob ;(

 

Will have an closer look on what changed from -4 to -5 on the weekend. From the top of my head I can see nothing that would cause this, but maybe I missed something. I remember though that someone else also had this issue when installing -4 if I remember correctly.

[marian...@gmail.com]

Well, regarding open sourcing NewsRob, the short answer is that it is the latter. Unfortunately I don’t have the time at the moment to give you the long answer Nick. Maybe on the weekend.

 

Written on a mobile device

 

--

[circ...@gmail.com]

I just want to thank Mariano again for this wonderful app, and hope it gets ported successfully to a new feed source.

I've set up tiny tiny RSS on a NAS at the house, and then set up a local instance of the fivefilters fulttext RSS client as a proxy for TTRSS. 

- it's been a huge amount of work
- it sort of works, but not nearly as nicely as Newsrob does
- in retrospect, Newsrob would be a bargain to me at a license cost of $100.

Of course, the sticker shock on a price that high would have been immense before I start understood the time invested in getting the integration more-or-less working betweeen the android client, the web server, the tt-rss install and the fivefilters tool - and the fact that at the end of the day, it looks as if the ttrss clients are very hard on my battery and the formatting of article titles on at least one of my feeds still leave a great deal to be desired.

[Thomas Harning Jr.]

tt-rss looks to have a great/simple web interface, someone just needs
to create a google reader API plugin that maps to what Newsrob
expects.

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[Corinne Peterman]

Mariano--  So I got some other crazy freezing in two other apps I use a lot and since the only thing that changed with those was the 4.2.2 Android update; I decided to do a factory reset.  I installed -5 directly clean and didn't restore my data but am redoing my settings and feeds.  So far (knock on wood) I'm not seeing the freezing I was before but I only just set it up so I will let you know if I run into an issue.

--Cori

[Aylons Hazzud]

2013/4/4 Thomas Harning Jr. <harn...@gmail.com>

tt-rss looks to have a great/simple web interface, someone just needs
to create a google reader API plugin that maps to what Newsrob
expects.

This would be RSS nirvana.

[Corinne Peterman]

Had to revert to -4 . Kept freezing after the first sync on exact syncing and I had to force close.

[Mariano Kamp]

And it wouldn't be NR specific. Other clients could use it as well.

[Mariano Kamp]

Could you please send me the traces file?

[Mariano Kamp]

In short, with regards to: Why I am not open sourcing NewsRob (or haven't done so far).

It would not save me time, but cost a lot of time to get others up to speed.

It would destroy any possibility to earn money with it later and make it a full-time job.

Just open sourcing something non-trivial is automatically turning into work, but not automatically turning into a success. You need a general plan/approach for OSS too. 

Currently the GR market is in flux. We'll see what emerges.

The code is too ugly ;)

[neo...@gmail.com]

Mariano, the code may be ugly but guess what? It works! And there are a ton of users (me included) who love and depend on this app. I really think you should just spend an hour and put the whole thing up on github and let the open source community fork it and play with it and clean it up. Add a donation page and let your baby go out into the world and grow.

Consuming (and syncing) RSS feeds is a huge part of my daily life. So far I don't see any way to replace the GR/NR combo and I'm really afraid for the future.. I'd be glad to pay and I'd be glad to clean up your code.. I'm sure there are many many others!

[Henrik Heimbuerger]

Here's another crazy idea: how about a Kickstarter (or similar crowdfunding platform) for a limited development sprint with specific goals? Maybe in the $5k-$10k range. I don't actually think that people would be willing to invest this much to keep NR going, but let's make them (us) prove it.

I would be interested in putting that development time in for a good deal. That is, if you're willing to share your code with at least one more person, or maybe just some modules of it – while keeping full ownership of any new code, of course. Basically, the idea is that you'd get an externally funded developer on the project.

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 3:45 PM, <neo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Mariano, the code may be ugly but guess what? It works! And there are a ton of users (me included) who love and depend on this app. I really think you should just spend an hour and put the whole thing up on github and let the open source community fork it and play with it and clean it up. Add a donation page and let your baby go out into the world and grow.

Consuming (and syncing) RSS feeds is a huge part of my daily life. So far I don't see any way to replace the GR/NR combo and I'm really afraid for the future.. I'd be glad to pay and I'd be glad to clean up your code.. I'm sure there are many many others!

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[Peter Riocreux]

How about a Kickstarter to fund setting up an RSS synchronisation service with a small subscription fee. People could use NewsRob (or perhaps Feedler on iOS, which will also become homeless soon) and OldReader in a browser, with the new service.

I would pay a small sub for that, or an upfront once-only lump sum.

We need to replace the bit that is going AWOL, not improve the interface. IYSWIM.

Pete

[Henrik Heimbuerger]

I see what you mean, but there are two points I can respond to:

1. Eventually, I think many of us also wish for an improvement of the interface (e.g. better support for bigger screens like tablets). However, I agree that this is the much less time-critical part.

2. I think there are enough (if not too many) RSS services on the market. Starting another one and redoing everything that has been done is probably not a very productive approach all things considered.
From what I know, the Unofficial Google Reader API is really quite bad for all this syncing we'd like to do with it. (That's not to blame the GR team, it's unofficial for a reason, it was never created to do that with it, it was just there for the webapp.) So reproducing a bad API on modern services does not sound like a very good idea in the long run.
Instead, a coding sprint could for example try to add support for the APIs of other services (NewsBlur, Feedly, I haven't investigated them yet) to NewsRob, which would be a lot better looking forward.

So there is a third path to the two alternatives you brought up: don't replace the bit that's going AWOL, don't improve the interface, but rather replace the gateway so we can use alternatives to the bit that's going AWOL.

[Mark Otway]

My ideal scenario would be for the offline, Tasker and instapaper features of Newsrob to be integrated into Newsblur.....

[tbar]

gReader (another Android RSS reader) is implementing the tt-rss api: http://www.greader.co/beta/

 

It is still in beta but the basics works -- for me at least.

 

[circ...@gmail.com]

The native ttrss clients work also - but getting offline caching working is fairly difficult and somewhat patchy, at least on one's own gear.  I've been using the fivefilters tool for that and it's still in 'sorta works' state.  Newsrob's offline caching is great and it's what I most need from an rss reader. 

[Mark Otway]

Yeah. We need somebody to take Newsrob's offline feature-set and drop it into the Newsblur (opensource) client. RSS nirvana awaits.

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[Mariano Kamp]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Henrik Heimbuerger <hen...@heimbuerger.de> wrote:

Here's another crazy idea: how about a Kickstarter (or similar crowdfunding platform) for a limited development sprint with specific goals? Maybe in the $5k-$10k range. I don't actually think that people would be willing to invest this much to keep NR going, but let's make them (us) prove it.

I would be interested in putting that development time in for a good deal. That is, if you're willing to share your code with at least one more person, or maybe just some modules of it – while keeping full ownership of any new code, of course. Basically, the idea is that you'd get an externally funded developer on the project.

Neodem, Peter, Henrik, all.

Hmmh, I think we could start slowly, as outlined above, and may even go a little further. So that I can ease into the idea to make NewsRob open source. 

Given my current work load of the old day job I don't really see myself doing much on NewsRob for the time being. At the same time I think you cannot really do all that much without me on NewsRob. So I need to be involved and spend time. 

I'd be willing to start with a small group of people to work on NewsRob for a while, say 3 months, and then we'll see how this works out. It will definitively be slow though. Even if you would be willing to do all the work, I need help you with understanding the code, the infrastructure and the reviews. And I can't really be all that responsive at the moment. 

And just to prevent misunderstandings, I would only be able to work with developers who can already do Java and some Android. 

[Travis Tabbal]

I'd be interested in helping out. I'm a professional Java developer as the day job, and have contributed code to a few Android projects. I could probably figure out the code, with time. A high level writeup of main flows and such would be welcomed, but not required. I'll help you write it if you like.

I would suggest using a git repo to share the code with anyone you decide to. It's a bit better at managing merge conflicts and such than most I've used. Perhaps a private GitHub? I'd contribute to the cost of that.

--

[Mark Otway]

So what's the intended back end that you guys would target? Please don't pick Feedly. Anything else I don't mind, but where I work we are quite locked down (financial institution) which means we can't install 3td party browser extensions. So feedly is dead to me until they can provide a Web viewer.

Of course perhaps the best solution would be to abstract out the API, and have plugins for different back ends, so Newsrob could work with Feedly, Newsblur or anything else (and people could write their own plugins for 3rd party services). That would be an awesome model (although admittedly more complex up front). :-)

[Travis Tabbal]

I think the first target would likely by anyone doing a GR compatible API, it's the obvious low-hanging fruit. After that, my thought would be to add the abstraction layer and allow other APIs to be used. As for which one to start with, perhaps a vote? Personally, I would want there to be some documentation available from the target system. I not a huge fan of reverse-engineering APIs from network traces etc..

I like the plugin sync engine idea, if we do abstract out the sync engine, I see no reason not to provide a documented API for plugins as part of the effort. Honestly, we're getting ahead of ourselves, Mariano has to make the decision to go this route, and choose who would be involved. I've offered to help, but have not been accepted into the yet-to-be-formed-if-it-is-at-all group. :)