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OOooooohhhh Vienna | A Google Reader Substitute

Vienna RSS Reader

A kick-ass replacement for the doomed Google Reader.

The smiles:

  • open source: no more Google indexing your feeds and using your data against ads to make money;
  • social channels integration: Faceache, Tweetmails, Buffermeup etc all covered (can even route the article content directly into whatever blog creation software you’re using);
  • integrated browser: basically allowing the user to surf the sources of the content without leaving the app (via tabs)
  • a plethora of keyboard shortcuts: current favourite is the space bar navigation function. Clicking it will not only scroll you through the article that’s open but when it reaches the end the app will direct you to the next unread article (nice);
  • free: *head-nods.

The frowns (kind of):

  • desktop / Mac only: not an issue for me but could be for some;
  • no sync to the cloud: currently syncs with Google Reader but obviously that will die in the coming months (would be great to have a Dropbox option for your subscriptions file so they are kept safe);
  • ‘mail link’ option: will probably work if you have an external mail client although not integrated with gmail (the only piece of the puzzle in terms of my workflow from Google Reader that I’ll miss).

Want to give it a go?

Grab your feeds from the Googles takeout page, download Vienna RSS Reader, import feeds (it’s just the “subscriptions.xml file”), play around with the preferences and ensure you customise the toolbar to feature all the social sharing / navigational stuff you need (see options below), then smile and carry on with your rss feasting.

vienna rss toolbar options

If you want it to do anything else check out the forums for help.

Have a go and let me know what you think. Maybe you’ve already found a replacement, what is it?

Long live RSS!


Addendum

As Reader wasn’t going to be shut till 1st July I thought I had plenty of time to find an alternative and flirted with a few online options discuss in my previous post. The idea was to write a blog post closer to the closure time as by then lots of these other platforms would have tightened up their offerings. Then again, why wait when you got something that works…

Related post: Why Closing Google Reader Is A Good Thing | A Retrospective
Published

2 comments

  1. Thanks for the report.

    There are hacks available on the web which allow “mailto:” links to be handled by a web browser and Gmail. Haven’t tested them extensively, but there are chances this could solve your third frown.

    1. Appreciate you taking the time to comment Barijaona – am actually using gmail via Fluid (so it’s in a separate desktop app) which might make it even harder… then again I’m not a coder – keep in touch :-)

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