NewsBlur

NewsBlur is a new web based RSS reader. It provides an alternative to Google Reader, but is much better designed and has more features.

I have only been using it a short time but I like it a lot. It has a lot of innovative features that should be in other news readers but are not, including a filtering system. Non of the other web based news aggregators offer filters. For me they are the killer feature in any RSS reader.

Until I started using NewsBlur I had not really noticed how poor Google Reader is and how its development has been neglected.

NewsBlur appears to be being developed by just one person. Why is it that he can produce such a great product and all the supposedly super smart Google engineers produce such crap?   Perhaps it is that Google has got rich and fat. It has over 31,000 employees and makes a lot of money. It has also got slow and one man operations like NewsBlur can run rings around it.

NewsBlur is free for up to 64 feeds. After that you can open a premium account. These cost $1, $2 or $3 per month [you decide how much you want to pay]. I think it is a great product and I wanted to reward the developer's enterprise so I took out a premium account.

NewsBlur has joined  Instapaper and Pinboard in my portfolio of paid services. All are one man operations and all are excellent. 

Still, Google can always buy it up and then close it down. That seems to be the usual way that the internet's big boys deal with innovative start-ups.

I would recommend you try NewsBlur.   Google is closing down a lot of its services and I suspect Reader will not last much longer.

Review