Thursday, May 2, 2013

Questions about Google+ and Reader and What Passes for Advice around Here--Edited

Edited to add links to Feedly and Old Reader. See below.

Y'all, I've been writing up a storm and feel so strange to have so little posted on this here particular blog o' mine. That will (hopefully) be changing soon with more regular posting, and a big post is coming up on Sunday. If you're looking for something to read now and you're interested in devotional writing, click over to Transforming Common Days, where I am doing a weekly post on Proverbs.

For today on Questioning, however, I have two questions for you, and few comments.

1. What's up with Google+? I think I have an account but have no idea what to do with it. Anyone have any helpful tips, like is it worth my time? Anyone using it? If so, what can you do on it?

2. Google Reader is GOING AWAY. Folks, this is devastating for me and for at least 120 of you who read this blog in Google Reader. (Isn't it freaky that I know that? I think so.) Have any of you figured out what you're going to do? If so, please share in the comments here if you want to help others out.

I have a bunch of blogs I read in Google Reader. I've tried migrating to Feedly and the The Old Reader, and haven't been successful transferring my feeds. VERY frustrating and a waste of two hours of my life I will never get back.

The Old Reader looks better to me than Feedly, so I'm going to manually move my feeds over there the hard way.

Several of you have asked what I recommend for my readers. If you have just a few feeds in your reader, it might be easier to subscribe to them via email. Most bloggers have that option in their sidebar. Just remember that you will have to respond to a verification email that sometimes gets shunted to your junk mail folder.

If, like me, you have lots of blogs in your reader (I have about 80), I recommend migrating to The Old Reader, just because it's free and similar to Google Reader, so the learning curve will be faster. (Hopefully the "easy" transfer of your subscriptions works for you!) I've also considered opening a special email account and subscribing under that account. That way, the blogs will all be together and not cluttering up my inbox.

If you're pretty savvy, however, you might want to investigate other services that have mobile apps and such. Feedly has received good reviews on the sites I've looked at, but there are others as well. A quick google search of Google Reader alternatives will be useful if you want more options.

What do you think?

3. No question, but if you want to see a cool video of killer whales, check out this link: Killer Whales

7 comments:

  1. First, I am angry that we are being put in this position. Bah. That said, of the three that I have spent time researching, Bloglovin seems to be the easiest, so that may be the route I take. Can you give more specifics on going with The Old Reader? Not sure i am following what that option is. Thanks!

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  2. I transferred (easily and almost perfectly) to Feedly a couple of months ago, and I am now used to it (I think that we only 'like' what we're used to and we don't 'like' change - once I got over it, I found that Feedly actually has a couple of features that either Google Reader didn't have or I wasn't using.. Kim S has been doing a great series on this issue - I recommend you check it out. Let me know if you need a link.

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  3. Wellllll......I'm sooo old school, that I just have all my favorite blogs listed under favorites. I know I miss a lot of posts, but some days I'm in the mood for a certain style, other days I just randomly choose. Works for me, LOL!

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  4. I switched to bloglovin, because when I looked at it, I could easily find the "import Google Reader" button, lol. I don't like that I have to click through to view posts in their entirety, but like Ardyth said - I'm pretty sure my liking is strongly correlated to my familiarity. Bloglovin is also free - not sure about the mobile aspects but I use a desktop. Mostly, UGH. It wasn't broken, so who went & fixed it?

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  5. Just like Ardyth I switched pretty easily to feedly thanks to the very informative articles by Kim S. I have gotten used to it and am too lazy to try out anything different. I agree that most people don't care for change and I was pretty upset with Google.

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  6. Bloglovin is a good reader as well and you can import from Reader.

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  7. Too bad no one is answering about Google+. I've been wondering the same thing. I know I'm on it, I just don't know what to do with it!

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Thanks so much for taking time to comment!