Tuesday, September 21, 2010

I feel like a stranger in a foreign land

Today I pulled up my beloved bloglines to catch up my blog reading only to find out that as of October first, there will be no more Bloglines! OMG - my immediate thought was, "how will I access all my favorite blogs?" At one time I had them all listed in my blogroll, but it is so much easier to just click them into bloglines, that I have been keeping track of all of you out there that way. It was simple enough to export all of my blog feeds into an OPML following the instructions on Bloglines, and then I imported them into Google reader. But now I am lost. I no longer see the current pictures without opening the blogs. I can't figure out where I'm going or what I'm doing. OK, I only gave it 5 minutes, but still.
Work has been so crazy that I haven't been keeping up with my blogs the way I like to. Now it's going to take me even longer to figure the whole Google Reader thing.

So what do the rest of you do to keep up with your blog reading. Also, since I have an iphone, is there a good reader out there any of you are using that also has an iphone app?

9 comments:

neighbourhood.gal said...

I can get photos in Google Reader, unless the blog author chooses to truncate their RSS feed. I'm not certain if I had to select something in a preferences or set-up tab to allow photos to come through.

I don't have an iPhone, so I can't help you there.

Deb said...

I looked at google reader and decided it was not for me. I have been using FeedDemon for a while now and find it easy to use. You might like to look at it too ...

Anonymous said...

I used to use Bloglines too and have switched to Google Reader as well 2 weeks ago but it's not for me. I'm now testing Bloglovin. Don't have an iPhone so I can't help you there.

Karin said...

You are streaks ahead of me! I just use my blogroll which puts the latest updated blog at the top.

Elaray said...

I felt the same way you felt when I learned Bloglines was going away. I've been using Google Reader, but I'm not happy with it. I think I'll take Deb's advice and look into FeedDemon.

NancyDaQ said...

You can pick up the Google Reader on the Google iPhone app as well. I used it for 4 days when I was in Vegas last week.

Personally, I wished I'd switched to Reader a long time ago. It works differently but has a lot to offer that Bloglines lacked.

Tina said...

Nancy, I also use Google Reader. It can be excruciatingly slow at times (as Debbie Cook mentions in her recent posts at stitchesandseams.blogspot.com). One hopes they know about this and are working on an update...

One thing I like about Reader is that I can click on "All Items" and get a list of all the new unread posts, complete with text and pics. So you don't need to open blogs, except as neighbourhoodgal points out, in some cases where you see only the first paragraph. This seems to be something some blog authors set up themselves. TwoOnTwoOff.blogspot.com is also missing her Bloglines - quite a few people have commented there on their preferred readers.

Hope this helps!

Dana said...

I hated Google Reader at first for a variety of reasons. Then I discovered a few important buttons and now I feel like it's very close to bloglines. There's a blue bar near the top where, on the right you can choose EXPANDED or LIST view. With the Expanded I can see all the pictures. I was really aggrevated the first time I used Reader because so many posts were appearing as new, then I discovered the "Mark all as read" button and now all is well. Hope that helps!

patsijean said...

I too have switched to Google Reader but do not like it as well as Bloglines. The system is different, a bit more complicated without much help and the scroll is slow. Google Reader imports everything on Bloglines even the items you wanted to keep new, plus others entries for reasons I do not understand. You cannot delete them and the reader lets you mark entries as read but they appear each time you open each blog. Strange. You can tag items in Reader which is good, but it is an irritating system.

I may take Deb's suggestion and look into FeedDemon.