So it's been almost two weeks since Google Reader actually died (July 1st, if you somehow missed the eulogies) and I think I've finally landed somewhere. I exported my OPML file back in June like everyone told me to — it's just a folder of feeds, sitting on my desktop, a weirdly sad little artifact of an app I used every single morning for something like six years. I want to walk through what I actually did with it, because most of the "Reader is dead, here's what to use" posts I read back in March were written by people who hadn't tried the alternatives for more than an afternoon.
First stop: Feedly. I signed up back when the shutdown was first announced, mostly because it was the one everyone was talking about, and I gather they picked up something like 3 million former Reader refugees over the past few months. The import was painless, just drag the OPML file in and wait. The web app is fine. Actually more than fine, it's kind of pretty, which Reader never was. But the keyboard shortcuts aren't quite 1:1 with what I had memorized (j and k still work, thankfully, but some of the other ones are mapped differently) and I kept fumbling for the first few days. Small thing, but when you're moving through 200+ items before coffee, muscle memory matters more than you'd think.
Second stop: Digg Reader. This one launched at the end of June, right in the shutdown window, and I'll admit I was skeptical going in because "Digg" hasn't meant much to me since maybe 2009. It's clean, it's fast, and it does the basics well. But it's missing search inside your feeds, which I use constantly for finding that one article I half-remember reading three weeks ago. That's a dealbreaker for me specifically, your mileage may vary.
Also tried, briefly: NewsBlur. I like the guy who runs it (Samuel Clay has been refreshingly upfront on Twitter about server load and growing pains) and the training feature for muting stories you don't care about is genuinely clever. But the free tier caps you at 12 feeds, and I've got over 140, so it was either pay $12 a year or move on. I moved on, mostly out of laziness, though I might revisit it once the dust settles.
Where I ended up: Feedly, with the caveat that I still don't fully trust it long-term. It's a free product syncing through Feedly's own cloud API now instead of Google's, and I have zero idea what their actual business model is. Free forever is not a business model, it's a waiting room. I give it maybe eighteen months before we're doing this whole exercise again with a different app. Bookmark your OPML export habit now, is basically my advice, because you will need it again.
Unrelated tangent, but staying on the phone/gadget beat for a second: Nokia showed off that new Lumia with the 41 megapixel camera sensor yesterday, the 1020. I watched the livestream during lunch and have genuinely mixed feelings. The camera specs are absurd in a fun way, and I like that someone's still willing to make a phone that's a little weird and a little chunky instead of another slab. But it's launching on AT&T only in the US as far as I can tell, and Windows Phone's app situation is still rough enough that I can't recommend it to anyone who isn't already deep into that ecosystem or just really, really wants to take pictures of their lunch at 41 megapixels.
Anyway. If you're still sitting on your Reader OPML file wondering what to do with it, my actual practical advice is: don't agonize over picking the "right" one. Try two of them for a week each with your real feed list, not a toy list, and see which one survives your actual morning routine. That's the only test that matters. Everything else is just marketing copy dressed up as a feature comparison chart.