If John Lennon’s song had another verse that said, “Imagine there’s no Google….” I’d know something about that because my Google Reader has been “loading” for the past day. No, I haven’t actually been watching the little spinning icon in the yellow bar because I’ve got better things to do, but every now and then I try to get into the account, and I can’t. When I tried to open the Reader settings, I got an error message.
Clicking on the “More” link in anyone’s “Shared Feeds” gives me the same thing.
I still have a Bloglines account, but it’s been so long since I paid attention to it that it’s out of date, without many of the feeds I currently read. It was interesting to see what was in there, like finding a box of old stuff in the basement. But I’m not going back. Instead, I spent my lunch time today downloading BlogBridge, and I’ve been locating the feeds from a combination of memory, bookmarks, and google history.
Funny thing, yesterday I was planning on introducing Google Reader to the teachers I’m working with in the web2.0 course we’re doing together. I told them that RSS delivers web content to you and puts you at the center of your own network. But I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t get into my account. So there I was, kicked out of my own little corner of the web – a pedestrian again.
I don’t want to dump the account because I want to keep the email. And the Reader has worked fine until now. I sent Google an SOS, but with little faith that a real person will respond. This is what I get for using such centralized services. Dependence and disappointment when they jam up. I have no idea what’s going on.
I’m getting used to the idea of living in a Google Reader-free zone for a while. I’m stoking the fire in the woodstove and piling up books for the winter.
5 Comments
Hi Doug,
I think you’ll like BlogBridge. I love it, but I have a laptop, so I don’t need a web-based aggregator. I do use Gmail, too, but in conjunction with .Mac mail, so if one goes down all my incoming messages, at least, are still accessible.
I wonder if there’s some way for folks using web-based aggregators to do something similar, so that all feeds are subscribed to in two aggregators, and if one goes down the other can be used instead . . .
Anyway, let us know how BlogBridge works out for you.
Cheers,
Eric
Might it have something to do with a blocking policy on the school’s end? I was getting errors a week ago that the Google login page couldn’t load, meaning I couldn’t get into reader or blogger. Turns out a setting had changed with our content filtering system, essentially blocking secure login screen from appearing for Google. Just a thought…
Scott, not unless they’ve figured out how to block it on my home computer… But, in your case, the Google login page is blocked? Not good.
BlogBridge is a great choice because you can sync your feeds and preferences with the BB service.
You can also publish your guides as OPML to the BB service which will give you some smart options to set up your own web aggregators. Look for Gregarius, Grazr and other OPML capable web services.
A Grazr page on your private webspace will be a nice backup.
As always just my two cents…
Doug, Sorry about your reader. I went from Bloglines to Google Reader, and lately I’ve been checking back in with my Bloglines account, considering another switch.
But I really like how you’ve described a reader as putting you “at the center of your own network.” I’m preparing to teach blog reading to my class, as well as trying to steer more colleagues towards blogs for professional development, especially as my school becomes a 1:1 environment. I’ve gone back to paper and pencil several times to try to make visual sense of my read/write web habits. Your quote helps; I’m going to try to work on a visual based on that statement, use it as a teaching tool. Mahalo.
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