Google Announces the Closure of Google Reader - Don't Panic, Use Feedly

Google Reader may have had a bigger influence on my life in the ed tech world than any other single app or service. Since the day I started using it in 2006 to now it has reliably served me fresh content from all of my favorite sites and blogs. So this evening when I learned that Google Reader is going to be shut down on July 1, 2013 I freaked for a minute. Then I realized that I'm not using Google Reader as much as I used to because for the last year I've been using Feedly to read most of my RSS feeds.

Feedly is a service that allows me to subscribe to all of my favorite sites and blogs. In my case, I've just synced it with my Google Reader account. Feedly has just announced that they have developed a service that will make it easy to transition from Google Reader to Feedly. I like Feedly because I can use it on my Android tablet, on my iPad, my Android phone, on my desktop, and in my Chrome and Firefox browsers. Feedly displays all of my subscriptions in a magazine-like format that makes it easy for me to quickly view 6-8 headlines and images on a page before deciding if I want to click through to the full article. From Feedly I can share articles to Evernote, Twitter, Diigo Powernote (Android), Facebook, and many other services. I can also simply save articles to read later in my Feedly account.


Feed Your Mind On The Go from Feedly on Vimeo.

Feedly is not the only alternative to using Google Reader. I have tried Zite, Netvibes, Flipboard, and Pulse in the past. You might also want to take a look at MyLinkCloud's new support for RSS feeds.