The Demise of Google reader
Google Reader was a great tool because it made gathering and sharing content from specific sources intuitive and easy. It provided us with one place from which to do most things. Today Google have announced that they are pulling the plug on Google reader.
In my eyes Google reader had become obsolete four years ago. That’s when I moved to services like Feedly, zite and others. Each of these services was more interesting because it took our feeds but used algorithms to make relevant content discovery faster and more intuitive.
Feedly was fun for a while but eventually I stopped using it in favour of zite. Zite was excellent until they decided to downgrade the user experience to a pinterest like interface. I don’t want the kindergarten treatment when searching for information. I want headers, I want a line or two of content and I want to have a lot of information displayed in a small space. Zite fell out of the useful apps category and was deleted from the ipad and iphone as a result.
The next project I’m looking at is Scoopinion. They have a plugin which tracks which news sources you visit and which articles you read. Based on your browising habits it recommends future articles. So far it estimates that I have spent 22hrs reading news over the past month or two with over 980 articles. By this logic it should be good at recommending stories that I would enjoy but it is too tabloid at the moment. This is probably due to the relatively small user base as this is a new project by developers in Finland.
I love content aggregators that study my habits and give recommendations based on this. It makes the surfing experience more enjoyable. You also don’t suffer from RSS burn out.
flickr | fun | lifestream | mobile | Nokia | Swiss walks
Hike near Leysin in the Canton De Vaud
Today was a warm day. With a group of people we went to Leysin for a hike. Here are some pictures from the event.
[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157628177774925″]
flickr | French walks | fun | mobile
A gorge and a Railway tunnel
Today I went exploring the French Jura in the hope of capturing some of the Autumnal colours. I drove an hour into the Jura and arrived at this place. They say that it’s a one hour walk but it took me less than that to cover. There is information along the path for children to learn about features of Gorges and how they’re formed.
What I found more interesting was a sign for the Tram Jurasienne railway line. In June there is a race along the path where the railway line once passed. Like Julia Bradbury in her British Railway walks I walked over a viaduct and along some lines until I arrived at a tunnel. I enjoyed that documentary series and as a result I would like to follow the line further.
It will require some research. So far I see that it was the first Jurassic tram. I also know that the race with the same name is 29 km long. What I don’t know is where it starts and where it ends. I also don’t know how much of the path is walkable. That is part of the time.
More information
Some more information
Aerial view of the line
[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157628003227616″]
feedly | iPhone | mobile | social media
Feedly for iPhone
Feedly is an application that takes google reader’s feeds and displays them in a more appealing manner. The browsing experience is more enjoyable as a result. The first item is displays on a splash page as ou see on the left. Flick to the right and you get a list of articles. This list fits articles to fill the screen. You must flick to the right to get to the next article.
Click on the article and the text goes full screen. You can  then bookmark articles, like them or share. Sharing is the standard tweet, mail, copy url, open in browser and mobilize.
Feedly navigation is done via the bottom left corner of the screen as you see in the image to the right. Click on this and you get a list of feeds you have subscribed to. This is the google reader list. Reading of feeds can be either by individual rss feed or by category. The number of unread posts is visible to the right. Active feeds can be read individually.
One of the most interesting features of feedly is it’s ability to auto-generate smart lists of interesting blog posts according to popularity/buzz, whether they were saved for later, essentials, latest and more. Buzz allows you to see which of the posts are most interesting according to popularity within the RSS feeds you and your contacts are subscribed to.
There is no ability to comment on articles at this moment in time and integration into google buzz is not possible yet. As a result you can quickly skim through articles but should you want to offer an opinion you will have to resort to another app.
Everything that Feedly offered to it’s users on computers and laptops is now available to it’s users via the mobile application. As a result your user experience will be the same across both platforms. With the iPhone version of this product you can read all articles while on the move, on trains in cars, or when waiting for a queue to move forward.
Geneva tweetup at the Bristol
After two years of online interactions I finally met certain Geneva twitter users. The tweetup took place at the Bristol Hotel in Geneva. There was a good group of people and they were what you would exepect from a tweetup.
It was organised by bristolgva and here is some of the related twitter conversation linked to the event.
NewsRack
For a while I have been looking for an external feedreader for reading the items collecting and stagnating in google reader. Yesterday I came across Newsrack and what I like is that it syncs instantly with the online version. As a result I can read the feeds on the macbook air when I am at home and out and about or I can read the feeds in browser when I am at work.
Look at the sync tab in the settings and you can select to sync starred, shared and shared by friends articles according to All/week/month/3 months. As a result you control how many items come in. You can select how quickly read articles are deleted. On the laptop I have set this to immediately after reading. As long as I have the articles online I’m happy.
Sharing is to all the usual places, e-mail, twitter, instapaper, readitlater, delicious and of course google reader. In this case memorise the shortcut commands and you can do this without bothering with the mouse.
Scrolling through articles is easy. Left and right goes from the feed view to the article and vice versa. The down key lets you go through the articles, click the right arrow and you can read the article. This allows for a rapid feedreading process.
The weakness I have has to do with the way keywords are dealt with. I would like an option to hide them from the RSS feed view. I just want to see the actual feeds, not all the sub themes. I hope they give us the option of choice in future versions.
I have only used the application for a few hours but so far I am happy with it. It’s not free but it’s only a tiny bit more expensive than a coke in Geneva’s old town.
mobile streaming | observation | social media | social media living room | social networking | twitter
The small matter of Cairo
What makes the situation in Cairo so interesting is the number of media outlets that you can use as sources. From 24 hour news channels like France 24, Al Jazeera, BBC World and others to individual people with mobile phones. For France 24 you have three languages to chose from, with Al Jazeera to you have three languages to chose from. With Sky News you have the choice between Standard definition and High definition.
You have live cameras looking into the square. There is no lag time between the acquisition and distribution of images. There is the challenge of aquiring images from the ground though. Journalists have been attacked, as reported on twitter, and through interviews once they arrive in their home countries.
Tweets have told us of arrests of certain individuals, of attacks on certain media offices etc. It means that whilst those within the country may not have access to this information we on the outside see it.
One of the aspects that is so interesting is the way in which people have been able to organise themselves. Facebook, twitter and other social websites have been important, like Bambuser and flickr. Mainstream as well.
I am looking forward to the literature that will come out from this event, especially if it successful. Imagine comparing a situation like that of Tomas in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” to this situation, especially if the end result is greater freedom.
Jaiku is back
Remember Jaiku? it’s that site that was compared to twitter and behaved like friendfeed before friendfeed existed. Over the last two days activity has increased on that site as at least twenty people go back to communicating on the site. It’s a throw back to a community that had been quite lively.
Online communities are funny in the way they cluster back to a place where they used to be. It’s like a migration but of an electronic kind. Does this mean I’ll have to pull out the N95 and use jaiku from there? We’ll have to see.