Month: June 2013

Feed Me!

In a few days, Google Reader will permanently shut down. Google's decision has left many geeks in a quandary. Smaller but well-known providers1 in the space are scrambling to "coral" as many people as possible. In navigating the services field, I've had to decide not to decide.

Right now, I"m using Feedly, a free service. The service has been mostly reliable and performs well. The iOS app ( I mainly read on my iPad ) is functional. The web front end is well-designed and responsive. Some RSS software developers are claiming they will support it soon. While I could stick with Feedly, I'm concerned about relying on another free service. How exactly does Feedly make money?

I searched for alternatives shortly after Google announced. I followed the advice of Dave Winer and set up my own River server on AWS. When the first bill from Amazon2 came due, I decided River wasn't an option for my budget. The CU and bandwidth costs were very high. I also found very little feed-reading software that supported the service.

Soon after that, I found Fever. I follow over 200 feeds, so I liked what Fever was offering.

Fever reads your feeds and picks out the most frequently talked about links from a customizable time period. Unlike traditional aggregators, it seems Fever works better the more feed I follow.

And the price was right. A one-time license fee of $30 and a few lines of code, and I had a Fever server running on one of my domains. However, the server didn't perform well. Syncing took a while, and the iOS version of Reeder was the only app I found with Fever support. I may need a beefier server.

So I continued using Google Reader with the Reeder app, hopeful that something would happen before July. There was some buzz around Feedbin, so I registered for the service. The service is usable, but the performance is poor. Downloading RSS feed items with Feedbin takes minutes instead of seconds with Google Reader.

The performance on Feedbin continued to suffer, and the developer took the service offline for over 7 hours to upgrade his infrastructure. I dropped the service. Perhaps it was a rash decision, but when I'm paying for a service, I expect you to perform better than FREE. I expect a better communication plan than a tweet linking to a blog post. The support request system leaves much to be desired. Sometimes the cost of a service isn't an indication of quality. Did Ben Ubois only create his service for software developers?

Some digital cognoscenti3 are voicing support for Feed Wrangler.

ReadKit for Mac just added Feed Wrangler support, so I’m trying that out now. Reeder for iPhone will get it shortly, and Mr Reader for iPad already supports it. Marco

I have yet to try Feed Wrangler. All of these services (except for Feedly ) are paid services costing about $24/year. I want to try Feed Wrangler if, but I already paid for a full year of Feedbin service, and I'm not sure when/if I'll get a refund. I purchased the ReadKit apps and am testing that out with Fever. It's a beautiful app but lacks most social sharing services I want.

Reeder is my current favourite RSS app. The iPad and Mac versions lack support for other feed services beyond Google Reader. However, Reeder's developer has removed the iPad and Mac apps from the store and has made the iPhone app free until he can release an update.

The current version of Reeder for iPhone will be free, starting today. Version 3.2 (already submitted) will support the following services as alternatives to Google Reader:

  • Feedbin
  • Feedly
  • Feed Wrangler (No support for smart streams yet in Reeder)
  • Fever
  • Standalone/Local RSS without syncing

I've tested the iPhone version, which supports Feedbin and Fever. It works well, but I’m looking forward to having support for the other services. I want to use my choice of feed reader on iOS and OS X with support for all the current offerings from RSS aggregators and sync services. If I’m patient, it would seem that Reeder will be that app.

In the meantime, I’ve exported all my feeds and will use Feedly Web and iOS apps. The Verge reviewed several alternative services and apps I have yet to try.

  1. The amount of "spam" from Feedly and Flipboard is obnoxious, but I have a few other options that work on iOS and OS X. ↩
  2. Running River on a Windows server instance cost me almost $11. I do not want to pay hundreds of dollars yearly for sync services. ↩
  3. I was searching for a word that means "people in the know," which seemed to fit. ↩

Assembling a kit

( )

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about my camera gear. I don't think my lens purchases suit my needs. I have an Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm VR that I use mostly for landscape and portrait photos, a Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G that I use when I'm out and about and a [AF-S DX Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8G][50mm[ that I rarely use but for portrait photos.

I'm reading an [old article by Ken Rockwell about who to assemble a camera kit. As I read through the lengthy article I started thinking about my camera kit. I feel as though I need more lenses even though I know that I have lenses that I rarely use.

For most people, a wide zoom and a tele zoom is all you need, and maybe one fast fixed lens in the middle for really low light.
A common error is to carry any two lenses whose functions duplicate something in the other lens. If you bring a 17-40mm zoom, then don't bring a 28-105mm zoom because you're duplicating the 28-40mm range.Ken Rockwell

My 18-55 mm covers some of the range offered by the 35 mm prime and 50 mm prime. There is overlap. Yes, the primes are faster than the 18-55 mm but I realize now that in most lighting situations I don't need the faster lenses. Following Ken's advice, I think I want is the Nikon AF-S Nikkor DX 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED and the AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED.

When I want to go out and shoot some landscapes or architecture I could take just the 10-24mm, my camera body and my tripod. Nothing else. The 35 mm would serve my needs for close up family portraits. I can use my feet as zoom or crop in Adobe Lightroom. I'm not sure I need a 70-200mm zoom. Most of my photography is landscapes or portraits. I think I could get buy with an 85 mm f/1.8 G prime lens although I'm not sure I need anything that fast. With studio strobes I find that I'm shooting at f/8 most of the time anyway.

So in reality I think my kit would consist of the D5100 body and two lenses -- the 35mm prime and the 10-24mm zoom.