Hip hip hooray!  My OPML file has finally been uploaded by The Old Reader and it couldn’t be sooner as it is harder and harder to find links to Google Reader on any of those ‘more’ menus.  Now that I’ve spent the day with it, I have to tell you I am hella pleased!  I wasn’t looking for something vastly different, new and exciting, else I would’ve been looking for something to replace my Google Reader long ago.  Nope, I liked how it worked and I accepted the changes over the years that I didn’t like (ex. Google+ replacing the ‘Shared Items’ feed).  I liked my shared items.  It was like a blog for what I read and if anyone wanted to see the internet as it is filtered through my head then they could subscribe.  Well The Old Reader has a shared items feed just like Google Reader used to have.  Here is mine.

And, there was this nifty thing on my Home screen that alerted me to possibly dead feeds.  This was awesome, and led me to clean out a few more.  Sorry, The Old Reader, my OPML could have been smaller.

If I had any complaints it would be that the option to ‘show only unread’ items in the settings menu doesn’t affect how your feeds show up in the navigation on the left.  But I can totally deal with that.

I wholeheartedly recommend The Old Reader for any of you Google Reader kids looking for a new world.  It took a while for my feeds to import due to heavy migratory traffic, so prepare to twiddle your thumbs, but you’ll get an email when it is done, so there is no wondering.

Boo Hoo, Google Reader is going away.  Allow me to do something that thousands of other people are doing right now:  look at a bunch of replacements.

What I already like: folder organization, bulk ‘mark read’ for the times when I need to catch up by missing stuff, being able to view one feed at a time instead of having everything in a pot (i like to read feeds in an order that has no bearing outside my head), show only unread or not.

What I went looking for:  web based, because I move around, and not requiring any download because:  hassle.  This had the effect of eliminating a lot of options, so if you like browser add-ons and such I suggest looking at things like Feedly (which is getting a lot of recommendations right now).

What I looked at:

FeedBooster – has an easy import feature and allows you to browse by folder, but amalgamates all posts within a folder to one stream of content.  Bad for me because: webcomics.  NOT FOR ME.

FeedReader – no categorization or organization.  Everything in the pot and no import feature that I could find.  Thus no picture.  NOT FOR ME.

Netvibes – more like a replacement for iGoogle, which has been plastered with messages about future unavailability for ages.  At a cube for each feed it’s not going to suite my needs. But, wait, on second look….there is a reader list style reading pane as well.  Reading something makes it disappear, so there is no going back?  Posts work like an inbox – open to read, check box on the side for actions.  The best part:  dashboard templates for changing themes and organizations.  The worst part is premium accounts for sale.  I always find that, though free versions might give you some thing to play with [the Brain], they always end up being frustrating in some way.  This is the only such reader I really checked out, I passed up all others with the paid accounts schema.  MAYBE FOR ME?  SECOND CHOICE.

The Old Reader – still in beta and a little busy to give me any immediate gratification on trying it out, but I am hopeful.  The tour looks like it has everything I already like, in fact, was made to replace just those things.  Plus there’s hints of social networking with other people using The Old Reader.  I think I am interested in this though I don’t know how I’d use it.  I’m going to say that THIS IS IT.  I only hope they don’t crash because of mass migration.