i have to admit i have never been a google reader user. sure, i set up a profile way back when, but went off and completely forgot all about it. the recent furor over google's decision to end the project drove me back to check out my feeds—one for a service that went under 18 months ago, and the other for google. still, i like to keep up with happenings just as much as the next guy, and so i've been using a diy solution that meets my needs. i thought i'd share, because it just might meet someone else's, too.
my personal news reading comes from two web services. the "reader" part is handled by readability, a lovely site that takes a web page and displays it with cusomizable styles that make it easier for aging eyes to read. it has a client for ios and android, as well as doing its thing in your web browser. it also allows you to archive pages and tag them for later easy retrieval. the following image displays an article clipped from the bbc web site.
the "aggregator" part of this is a cool site called if-this-then-that. this service allows you to create recipes that perform an action based on some event: for example, if it's raining, send me an sms; if i get an email from steve, copy it to evernote; if i leave a voicemail with the words "clap on", turn on the lights in my house. this is some cool stuff. what i've done is created a few recipes that look for new items from the news feeds i'm interested in, and send those items to my reading list on readability. works for me.
whatever your emotional investment in google reader, don't let it get you down. there are a bevy of off-the-shelf alternatives, and even some decent homemade ones. just remember... don't worry, be happy :-)
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