Comments on Ryan Tate - The Hack: Google Reader is a slow, limpy, sedated way to rea...

I tried using Google Reader way back when it first...

2007-12-09T11:09:20.474-08:00

I tried using Google Reader way back when it first appeared, but I found that it didn't seem to be able to handle the large number of feeds I subscribe to. Posts would show up hours or days late even, and sometimes it would like, freeze or something and then erase all my unread posts.

Probably they've improved since then, but I had such a bad experience that I don't know when I'll be ready to try again.

Louis, Maybe, but right now Google Reader is six p...

2007-11-26T12:19:47.280-08:00

Louis, Maybe, but right now Google Reader is six posts behind on Eater SF. They linked to a story of mine this morning but I didn't find out until I got the Google Alert on my name. I am guessing they are behind on some other feeds too.

It's all relative. It's probably a fine newsreader for people who aren't reporters or full-time/frequent bloggers and don't need things faster than 2-3 hours after they were posted.

Google Reader has recently gotten A LOT faster at ...

2007-11-25T08:04:11.178-08:00

Google Reader has recently gotten A LOT faster at picking up feeds, thanks to their picking up on Pings almost immediately, especially when posted from Blogger. I had a similar post drafted, comparing Google Reader's slowness with Spokeo's speed, but they updated, and it's no longer true.

"products" should read "projects"

2007-11-16T15:57:28.599-08:00

"products" should read "projects"

Because Google Reader handles large amounts of fee...

2007-11-16T15:56:57.963-08:00

Because Google Reader handles large amounts of feed content better, by loading it in parts.

So for work alone I follow 95 feeds, which isn't even that many compared to other people I know. But because my script put all the contents of all the feeds on one page, it was starting choke my browser, even on fast computers.

Rather than take time out from more useful products to improve my system (to not show already-read items, for example, or to paginate the results), I decided just to write some code to export to Google Reader.

Basically that entailed getting my code to export via RSS feeds it creates itself using text patterns (regular expressions), then to export via OPML a list of all RSS feeds, so Google Reader could import my feeds.

This took only about an hour, and worked with very few bugs. Coding the functionality into my Perl modules/scripts would have entailed, jeez, at least four weekends, maybe 40 :-)

Why did you switch?

2007-11-16T15:40:31.122-08:00

Why did you switch?