Reader - Mike Cohen

I’ve been a very active user of Google Reader for a long time, so I was very disappointed when they decided to shut it down. After trying several replacements, I settled on Feedly as my replacement. I prefer to read news on my Mac and Reeder was my favorite desktop newsreader. Unfortunately they’ve been neglecting their Mac app and haven’t updated it to support alternatives to Google Reader.

ReadKit looked like an attractive Mac newsreader, but until a few days ago, it didn’t support Feedly. Since they added support for Feedly with their latest update, it’s now my favorite newsreader. In addition to reading RSS feeds through Feedly, Fever, Feedbin, FeedWrangler, and NewsBlur, it also supports bookmarking & article saving services like Instapaper, Pocket, Pinboard, and Delicious, so I’m using it as a substitute for Pocket’s Mac app as well as my news reader.

There has been a lot of kvetching about Google Reader’s shared items feature. People say that it ‘sends their shared items sent to people in their mailbox’, which isn’t true. You need to explicitly add friends to Reader so you can see their shared items.

Uploaded with Skitch!

When you add someone to your friend list, you see their shared items in your feed list – that’s all.

Uploaded with Skitch!

Google Reader has always allowed you to share items. You have full control over which items you share and whether your shared items are public. I don’t know about everyone else but when it says your shared items are publicly accessible it means just that — everyone is able to see it. I always assumed I was sharing those items with the world.