{"id":335,"date":"2013-07-02T11:53:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T15:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/?p=335"},"modified":"2016-01-28T14:05:38","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T19:05:38","slug":"newsreading-in-a-post-google-reader-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/newsreading-in-a-post-google-reader-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Newsreading in a post-Google Reader world"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soon after Google announced that they were discontinuing Google Reader, I switched to RSSOwl<\/a> as my newsreader. RSSOwl is an native application that runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux. It has a slightly retro UI that is familiar to anyone that started reading news with usenet. It is entirely local, meaning that you can only access it from a single PC.<\/p>\n

For me, these are good things, although I understand that for others they may be dealbreakers. Since Switching to RSSOwl, I’ve broken the habitual but low-benefit activity of sifting and starring through news items, a practice that did little more than generate a endless list of items to go back to while providing me with little more increased awareness that whatever I could glean from scanning the headlines.<\/p>\n

My current practice is to open RSSOwl once or twice a day (and some days I forget), click the “update all feeds” button, and then scan the headlines. Interesting items are scanned and if it looks like something I should read, it gets added to Instapaper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Granted, I’ve developed a bit of a Instapaper backlog now (who doesn’t have a reading pile backlog, I ask you!), but it is growing slower than before: fewer items are added and more items are actually read and pulled off the stack as well.<\/p>\n

I will admit that I’ve been tempted a number of times to investigate one or more of the web-based alternatives that have been making the rounds these last few days, but I was strong and resisted! My new system is working, and working well, thank you. There is always room for optimization, but for that I think I’ll delve into the many options and features in RSSOwl that I haven’t yet played with. If I learn anything useful, I promise I’ll report back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soon after Google announced that they were discontinuing Google Reader, I switched to RSSOwl as my newsreader. RSSOwl is an native application that runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux. It has a slightly retro UI that is familiar to anyone … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[81,82],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updates","tag-productivity","tag-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/edbilodeau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}