Feedly enhances its RSS service in effort to become go-to Google Reader replacement

By Trevor Mogg June 4, 2013

With only a month to go before Google brings the curtain down on its RSS reader, competing services have been busy sprucing up their own offerings in a bid to grab the hordes of lost souls who’ll be searching for a new home for their beloved feeds.

When Google announced in March its intention to shutter its RSS reader, Feedly was quick to put out the call to Reader users looking for an alternative service. Within days it picked up more than half a million new users, a figure which quite possibly resulted in smoking servers, though the team pressed on regardless.

On Monday the folks at Feedly gave a progress report on its efforts to soup up its engine room in expectation of an even bigger influx of new users at the end of the month.

“Our focus over the last 60 days has been to add new hardware and release weekly incremental updates to make the transition from Google Reader to feedly as seamless as possible,” the service said on its blog.

Feedly has been pulling ideas from its User Voice site, where anyone can suggest ideas for improving the service. From these ideas, the team has designed a roadmap for Feedly’s future development, with the following areas at the forefront of the service’s plans:

1 – Speed. This is the most important aspect of the feedly experience. We recently hired some great people on both the dev and ops sides and we look forward to sharing with you the result of their work

2 – Search within my feedly

3 – Pure web access

4 – Windows Phone and Windows 8

5 – Improved group sharing

6 – Bug fixes (login, utm_source, loading…, missing feedly mini, adding feeds)

Feedly also announced integration with a number of RSS apps – including Reeder, Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader – enabling users to access their Feedly feed before Google Reader is retired on July 1.

While Feedly certainly appears to be making all the right moves, it isn’t, of course, the only service hoping to pick up some new users in the coming weeks. For a rundown of the best Google Reader alternatives out there, check out DT’s comprehensive guide here.

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Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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Google has decided it no longer likes the idea of sexually explicit content appearing on its Blogger platform, informing blog owners on Monday that such material must be removed by March 23.

As the situation currently stands, Google allows "images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity" (with some exceptions) on Blogger, as long as the owner of the blog marks it as containing adult content.

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Google moves into GoDaddy territory with domain registration service

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Perhaps the only surprising thing about the news that Google's getting into the domain name registration space is that it didn't do it earlier.
When you consider that so much of its business is Web based and that it seems to try its hand at just about every Internet-related venture going, it's taken a while for it to come around to the idea of registering domain names. Perhaps it's only just found a way of making money out of it.
The service is currently in beta and is invite-only (you can register for an invitation code here), but should Google Domains get a proper launch down the road, it'll go up against the likes of GoDaddy, a giant in the business of domain name registration. GoDaddy has been operating since 1997 and just a couple of weeks ago filed for an IPO.
Google's service, imaginatively called Google Domains, offers a number of features for those looking to register a domain name, including:
- no additional cost for private registration (a fee you currently have to pay with GoDaddy)
- creation of up to 100 email aliases, eg. help@your_company.com or sales@your_company.com, and so on.
- domain forwarding enabling you to point your domain to an existing one.
- domain management tools
- support for the hundreds of new domain endings (.guru, .photography, etc.) rolling out over the next few years
- phone and email support
Google won't offer hosting for websites, but has partnered with services such as Squarespace and Wix to provide hosting services to its customers.
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RSS: The Old Reader launches Premium version, $30 a year

old reader launches premium version rss

The demise of Google Reader caused a bit of a hoo-ha last year, with many news addicts left to search out another RSS reader to house their numerous feeds.
After working your way through the various alternatives, chances are you've found one you're happy with now, whether it's Feedly, Digg Reader, Pulse, or some other reader among the myriad of offerings out there.
The Old Reader was a natural choice for many, as its design – like its name cleverly suggests – emulates that of Google's shuttered reader.
However, if you did jump onto The Old Reader and have more than 100 feeds, the company announced Wednesday that you're now classed as a Premium user, and as a consequence will need to hand over three bucks a month, or thirty bucks a year, to continue using the service.
For the next two weeks, the site is also offering a discount where you can use the reader for two bucks a month or twenty bucks a year. Keep in mind, though, that this is only available to the first 5,000 account holders that apply, so you'd better get your skates on if the deal appeals.
Less than 100 feeds? You can still sign up to the Premium service and enjoy the benefits, which include full-text search, faster feed refresh times, and the ability to create up to 500 subscriptions.
You'll also get Instapaper and Readability integration as well as early access to new features, the team said in a blog post Wednesday.
The company behind The Old Reader, which bought it from the original developers last summer, said the payment system has been introduced to cover running costs such as hosting, development and support. It looked at the possibility of incorporating ads but chose the Premium route after deciding sponsored content would be too invasive.
According to The Old Reader, only 10 percent of current users have more than 100 feeds, so the vast majority can continue to use it for free. However, if you're a heavy user of the service and would rather not pay for it, you could always try one of the free readers mentioned at the top of the page.
[Image: Pavel Ignatov / Shutterstock]