Author: Bob Martens

Categories
Technology

Google Reader Replacements

As has been known for a few months, Google is shutting down Google Reader on July 1. Sadly, no clear alternative has come out for me … or at least, not a complete solution to replace my reliance on Google Reader + Reeder.

Google Reader Death

As such, I am just going to outline, briefly, what I have tried and what I am holding out for at the moment. Luckily, I have moved off of Google Reader (and have for the past month or so), but now I am starting to think about how I might mitigate this issue from happening again in the future.

This is my story.

Feedly

I give them credit, they have a very pretty-looking site and pretty apps as well. No app on the Mac is a bit of a problem, but it works pretty well. They just switched everyone over to their own backend, so it is definitely an alternative.

One issue I have had is that it is just so DESIGNED. I’m not quite sure what doesn’t sit well with me, but their entire experience is so full of whiz-bang effects that it doesn’t quite work as just a simple, easy, feed reader … which is what I am looking for. Reader + Reeder was able to cut out most or all of the cruft that Google kept bolting on, so it worked really well.

So it might work for you but it really didn’t work for me. It also invited me to get into categorizing my feeds more, which is a time-sink and the cost-to-benefit ration quickly dissipated over time. I don’t need additional stuff.

Oh, it is also free, which is not going to turn into a theme for the rest of this.

Feed Wrangler

From David Smith comes a pay-to-play RSS reader. For a subscription fee of $19/year you get access to the Feed Wrangler backend, the online reader, and (currently) the two iOS apps made specifically for Feed Wrangler.

While the feed scraping isn’t as fast as Google Reader, being able to pay for the backend myself (or help to do it) makes me feel better about the service as a while.  While currently there is not a Mac app available, Silvio Rizzi, the developer of Reeder, has announced that he is currently working on adding Feed Wrangler support for future versions of Reeder on both Mac and iOS.

That’s awesome.

The current iOS apps work well, and I’m sure David will continue to update them, but I’m hoping those mythical Reeder updates come out soon so that I can hook up my Feed Wrangler subscription and be a happy person.

It is a simple service and that allows it not to annoy me as much as Feedly did/does. Right now this is where I house my RSS feeds until such a time as something better shows up.

NetNewsWire

The grandfather of RSS applications on the Mac.

Black Pixel just released the first public beta of NetNewsWire 4 for OS X and it is fast. It is pretty. It is an OS X app through-and-through.

Those are all things in its favor currently. Sadly, it is also incomplete and lacks one of the basic things missing from any solution replacing Google Reader: syncing.

They have announced that they are working on a sync solution and also have stated that their iOS apps are currently in-flux due to the imminent release (this fall) of iOS 7. Those are not exactly good things …

… but the current beta is so good that I am trying it out as a secondary feed reader on just OS X. My hope is that their sync solution will maybe allow me to host it myself on my own server, but I will just need to wait and see.

Just go and try out the beta and see if you like it. So far I’m extremely happy, but I need to see how they are going to handle sync and also when they are going to get their iOS apps out before I can choose this as a complete solution.

Conclusion

Right now, there is no complete solution for me. Reeder doesn’t support Feed Wrangler yet, Feed Wrangler doesn’t have an OS X app yet, and NetNewsWire is the least-ready of them all … with an OS X application.

So, I keep my stuff in Feed Wrangler for now and hope that I will have a better picture by the time my subscription is due next year.

Categories
Technology

Various Thoughts on iOS 7

I really don’t have any of my own, but here is some reading from others if you are interested in which way I am thinking right now:

I think those four articles, mashed together, would just about sum up my thoughts right now. Of course,  Apple has a ton of work to do to get it ready for launch, but I’m having fun taking a peek at what is to come.

Categories
Technology

WWDC 2013 Keynote in Brief

The Wirecutter has a good overview of all of the news from the WWDC 2013 Keynote. If you are interested in the news … head over there and read it. There was a lot covered.

I’m, obviously, excited. However, I don’t have experience with anything announced so I won’t really put down my opinions on this blog until I get to play with something.

However, from what I have been reading and seeing from WWDC, there is a lot more that is to come and a lot of really fun things. OS X Server looks to be getting a pretty decent update, especially for development teams.

Categories
Gaming

Games are not Serious

Note: This is an old post from the soon-to-be-defunct Slow Gamers. That site is closing, so I’m moving over my Opinion posts from that site to here.

IllusiveMan1

In the never-ending quest to “legitimize” games, it feels like we’ve lost something in the process. Maybe it is nostalgia, or maybe wishful thinking, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering: why are games so serious all the time?

It isn’t just the games themselves, either, that seem to be so serious. It is now the people around games that are getting more serious. You need to be a gaming monk in order to have any opinion worth taking. If you can’t tear apart a new game because it doesn’t have some specific game mechanic from the past that you enjoyed … well, you don’t have any opinion or a voice worth listening to.

If you can’t look at the current gaming landscape and be discouraged by the endless number of sequels and remakes you might as well pack up and go home. You obviously aren’t a gamer and can’t be listened to.

Why do we take gaming and ourselves so serious? What benefits do we derive by having such attitudes? How does this help anyone?

It seems that you can’t walk ten feet without someone declaring that X game is overrated because Y game did it before or did it better. It is like we all think we are sitting in a room, by ourselves looking over this vast world of “gaming” with a vastly superior knowledge and understanding and can declare whatever we like. We are auteurs! Our opinions are paramount! We are very serious people with opinions on this very serious subject of video games! Listen to us!

I’m not sure why this happens, but it makes us all sound a little funny. I’m unabashedly biased for Nintendo and I won’t deny that fact, but I also understand that my wants and needs aren’t serious. I’m not going to be paralyzed if the next Legend of Zelda doesn’t fix some issue I have with their past games. I can’t take myself so seriously. They are video games! They’re supposed to be fun, right? Maybe?

I have a catalog of video games just sitting around collecting dust (or whatever they might collect sitting in my Stream catalog) that I have never finished because, frankly, I just wasn’t having fun. Oh well. It isn’t a big deal, I have many better things to do with my life than to get upset about video games or the companies who create them.

I’m being quite hypocritical here because I just started up this video game website and will be posting my own opinions on video games hopefully quite regularly. However, I hope that I won’t take myself too seriously. These things are games and should be fun. If they aren’t fun anymore, then walk away, go outside, make some friends, and enjoy life. If you are having fun, then continue to enjoy the games you are playing.

Times change and people change, that is the way things work. Wishing for companies to do things to appease people who are just like us isn’t going to make it happen. We need to enjoy what we do have, hope for the future that things will continue to get better, and get back to enjoying the life that we do lead.

We don’t need to be serious when it comes to video games.

Categories
Gaming

I Do Not Fear the Remake

Note: This is an old post from the soon-to-be-defunct Slow Gamers. That site is closing, so I’m moving over my Opinion posts from that site to here.

John Siracusa has an awesome take on video game remakes (in light of the recent Wind Waker HD announcement by Nintendo) over at Hypercritical, but I wanted to share my own thoughts on the matter.

zelda-3ds-n64-ocarina-of-time-screenshot-comparison-article_image

There have been a number of remakes and re-releases with graphical updates recently, the above image coming from the Ocarina of Time remake for the 3DS. I’m not afraid of these remakes and I don’t wish that they would go away for a number of reasons.

  1. I really like these games and would love to have them available on my new system. Wind Waker has been on my play-again list for a while and now I don’t have to try to find a Gamecube to play it again, I’ll just quietly wait for the Wii U version to be released. I can be patient.
  2. It gives developers a playground to try out new techniques and technologies. As was stated in the Nintendo Direct, Wind Waker HD was born out of trying out different art styles from the different Zelda games on the Wii U hardware. Making a fleshed-out game is only going to give them an opportunity to fine-tune some of their development software and graphics engines so that future games will be even better.
  3. The teams are generally smaller for these sorts of things so it might give the company an opportunity to let junior developers spread their wings a little to gain some valuable experience. I would imagine that remakes are a great way for something like that to happen.
  4. I just want to play these games again!

Alright, the last one is purely my own want. However, I understand the flip side of this as well. These games weren’t originally developed on this system so the control schemes are generally not as smooth (unless a lot of work is done … think Twilight Princess-level work to add motion controls). It also does take talent and time away from new games.

But it is known that just adding people to a project isn’t going to make it happen faster. Just “staffing up” can slow down a project sometimes as people need to get up to speed, might call into question decisions that have already been made, and also usually mean more managerial oversight as well. Those are not good things.

If a company is committed to putting out high-quality remakes (as I expect Wind Waker HD will be … even though I’m guessing it will be Wind Waker U), then I’m not going to fear them.

I will embrace them.