If you’ve not tried Inoreader, give it a second glance as its interface and features have evolved over the years to become one of the strong players. It is a clean, simple and yet powerful content reader designed to cater for news feeds and any web articles that you like to save for reading, minus unnecessary frills and hassles.
from https://is.gd/8BsjI5
Selected by Galigio via Computer Borders
The first time I noticed Pulse on my friends’ Iphone I was astonished. It as what I was looking for since my first Nokia phone: the possibility of read a personalized selection of my favorite news directly on my mobile.
Moreover, Pulse was able to load images so I had the possibility to directly access graphs or pictures. I was amazed and I spent a lot of time to select the right RSS to feed it.
I was sure that Pulse was the best app for different reasons. The main was its Android version that allowed me to not worry about the next mobile I would have chosen in (the very near) future. The second was its flexibility! I was able to choose feeds from its huge library or directly add my favorite RSS if the specific feed was not available. When Pulse started its website Pulse.me I was sure that I would have been one of its best fans for the life.
The same feeling I had with Flipboard. It was easy to use too. Flipboard had a more attractive look and it was able to suggest many interesting news as soon as I selected the favorite categories in its menu. For my feelings Flipboard was a bit too invasive because I was not able to actively define the precise sort of news it was suggesting me but it was still useful for my purposes.
The first doubt about Pulse emerged when it was acquired by Linkedin… Why I would have to connect my news selection with other Linkedin users? On one hand the selection could represent an extra element to describe, in a more complete way, my professional profile but, on the other hand, my RSS feed selection was also a personal added value that (for my opinion) gave me a plus towards my potential competitors.
Information are money. And RSS news feeds can sometimes represent the main part of the concept of information. When I decide to share my RSS selection I automatically decide to wipe out this difference between me and other “competitors”. And perhaps I am deleting part of my personal better skills.
For this reason I decided to not link Pulse to Linkedin and I loose the trust I had for it.
At the end I decided that I would have preferred to test a simple RSS reader on my notebook. In few words I opted for less mobility to more independence (and privacy).
And the nightmare began….
In fact I was not able to download the RSS feeds I had in Pulse and in Flipboard. Because it is simply not possible. If you decide to use Pulse or Flipboard you are welcome but that is one way path. You are not allowed to easily leave them. If you want, you can always cancel your account but all the RSS you saved on your account cannot be downloaded. If you really want to opt-out you have to manually copy them to your local RSS reader.
I let you image how much time I wasted copying and pasting a five year long RSS feeds history to Akregator but it was the only way that I caused myself for not reading the TOS when I registered to Pulse and Flipboard.
I just want to focus your attention to one point. Beware to similar online free services. They are useful till you decide to use them but, when you change your idea, they can become a real, real problem.
I was a silly user. In fact, accepting the TOS, I gave them the legal authorization to monitor and use my RSS selection as they preferred without any warrant about the possibility of withdrawing in a easily way. I am not a genius nor an Internet evangelist so I really don’t think that my personal RSS feed selection could have a big commercial value for anyone. But when I think that my 2 cents RSS selection could be summed to a virtual infinite number of other 2 cents feed selections I feel myself silly.
The advice I’d like to give you is about TOS. Read them and, before accepting TOS, be sure that the agreement you are signing is enough convenient for you.
Decide if the authorizations you are giving them can compensate what they are offering to you for free. And…. be sure you can easily and freely save and/or re-use the data you have been sharing with them for so many years.
At this point it’s history: Google will be out of service by the next July. It could appear nonsense but I still think that RSS readers are the most flexible solution for people who need to stay updated. Social media represent a possible solution but, in my opinion, nothing is better and more powerful than RSS.
Digg.com has promptly announced the launch of its own alternative online reader but, for now, none is able to say when it will be ready. Moreover Digg has not provided any information about this new RSS reader and so we cannot comment any of its potential feature neither compare it with the “old” Google Reader.
Surfing the web, many possible alternatives will pop-up but just few are the right ones if you don’t want to wait Digg.com. At the moment netvibes.com (in the past it was also known as bloglines.com) is the most immediate solution because allows you to import OPML – XML setting from your Google Reader. In fact, you can save all your Google Reader settings in a OPML – XML file just using the Import/Export panel into the Settings Menu (Download your data through Takeout) into the Google Reader. Netvibes.com represents an easy and fast alternative but I personally don’t like the graphic layout offered by this free online service. It is easy to use, really flexible and cozy but it doesn’t run properly on old computers because dated hardware, with inadequate graphic cards or small RAM, will slow down your OS when you visit netvibes.com. Last but not least you can decided to keep private your RSS selection, share it on social media or allow people to visit directly the webpage containing all the feeds you selected and/or just a single RSS box.
My other choice is represented by theoldreader.com that is the real successor of Google Reader. Theoldreader.com has the same features than the Google Reader and it is really nice to see and read if you like the clean, evergreen layouts. Theoldreader.com allows you to sign in using your Google account and it is possible to import the OPLM -XML configuration file you saved from your personal Google Reader. The only problem with theoldreader.com is represented by the time you have to wait before it will import the OPLM – XML file you uploaded from Google Reader. In my experience I had more than 22,000 people before me in the queue and I had to wait for, more a less, a week before I was able to use it with the imported parameters… Theoldreader.com has some advanced features which allow you to share your RSS selection and save the most interesting in order to create a more private collection for your specific interests. Not bad and useful!! 
This week, in our Linux Page (in Spanish), we posted some lines about editing and changing the feed/podcast reader on Firefox when you have previously chosen a specific program to automatically subscribe to podcasts. If you are using Firefox 3.5 on Linux, you can simply go to Edit -> Preferences and type Feed in the search bar. At this point you have a button menu with all the different options; we suggest to select the Preview in Firefox one. If you have an older version of Firefox that does not allow you to follow the above path (or for some reason, by default, you prefer the most difficult way) you have to open a new Tab and type about:config in it. After a brief warning message you can type Feed in the location bar and find the browser.feeds.handler line. At this point it is necessary to change the value field to Ask and next time you will decide to subscribe a podcast you will free to choose your favourite program. We hope this few lines could be useful and easy to execute for you all!
This post is unusual because today we have not written a review about Linux or freeware but we are launching a new feature in our Blogroll: CB Flakes which is just our personalized page of Pageflakes (a web 2.0 web aggregator). In CB Flakes we selected few interesting (we hope) RSS/Atom feeds about Linux, freeware, e-commerce, technology and science (in general). Moreover we added some widgets we think could be useful for everyone (World Time Clock, Google Map, Universal Blog Search, Flickr, Wikipedia, YouTube, Aruna Send, Document to PDF, Sudoku and Comics). Last but not least we inserted a message board widget you can use to suggest us new RSS/Atoms to add in our pageflakes. Try and enjoy our pagecast! 
Computer Borders 