JRR

Today Google Reader is no more, but I’m happy for now with Feedly (which syncs with my favorite android reader); I’m also watching Hive Reader and The Old Reader.

Also ending today, unannounced, is RSS publication of Google Alerts. I discovered it this morning like this:

The alerts dashboard informs me that “Google Reader is no longer available. To continue receiving Google Alerts, change to email delivery.”:

They’re implying that Alert publication depends on Google Reader. There may be a technical reason for this, but it’s not apparent to me. As another blogger put it, “I see no substantial technical reasons why it should kill what amounts to another serialization format.”

A Google Alerts help page still references the fact that “You can read your feed in any RSS feed reader”:

Google Alerts has been incredibly useful for me in the past, but the service seems to have been degrading lately (this has been noticed by others as well). I’m trying out TalkWalker as a replacement.

Edit: it’s back.