{"id":1693,"date":"2013-03-26T09:11:46","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T13:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.equipmentlink.org\/blog\/?p=1693"},"modified":"2013-03-26T09:11:46","modified_gmt":"2013-03-26T13:11:46","slug":"death-of-google-reader-32613","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equipmentlink.org\/blog\/?p=1693","title":{"rendered":"Death of Google Reader, 3\/26\/13"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Death of Google Reader\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Contributed by Joel Zimba, Technology Outreach Specialist, MDTAP<\/em><\/p>\n

Last week Google announced they would be discontinuing their Google Reader service as of July 1.\u00a0 What\u2014you\u2019ve never heard of Google Reader?\u00a0 That may not be surprising as Google claims nobody is using the service.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s back up and go over exactly what Reader does and why it\u2019s useful, especially from an accessibility standpoint.\u00a0 Google Reader is simply a way of collecting content which is frequently updated and reading it.\u00a0 There\u2019s a little button at the bottom of many blogs and websites (including our own) which simply says \u201cRSS.\u201d\u00a0 If you take the little string which shows up when you click that button ( on modern browsers, you see nothing other than perhaps an invitation to subscribe), you\u2019ll be able to see whenever new content is added to the blog without actually going to the site and reading it.\u00a0\u00a0A feed reader takes many of these RSS feeds and gathers them together.<\/p>\n

Of course you can sort them, filter them, arrange them, star them, email them and any number of other things.\u00a0 Typically though, most users just see new articles as they are published.\u00a0 Think of it as a newspaper which constantly updates with all of the new blog articles as they arrive.<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s the magic part.\u00a0 It doesn’t just take you to the originating website.\u00a0 The content is pulled into Reader and you can read it right there.\u00a0 There are even ways of playing with the content to make it read more like like just a page of text and less like a web page.\u00a0 That\u2019s the accessibility part.\u00a0 If your feed reader is accessible, it might actually make reading a website which is partly or completely inaccessible into something usable.<\/p>\n

We use RSS for lots of things.\u00a0 It\u2019s what makes new podcasts download automatically.\u00a0 It\u2019s just all behind the curtain.\u00a0\u00a0Your podcast player uses essentially the same service to know when a new episode of Cartalk or Radio Lab is available.\u00a0 Then it just downloads and everything is ready to go. This is where things segway into why Reader is going away.\u00a0 As a side note, Google now owns FeedBurner which is a similar service but for audio and video content.\u00a0FeedBurner\u2019s days may be numbered.<\/p>\n

Lots of people don\u2019t log in to Google Reader.\u00a0 They use other programs which connect to Reader in the background.\u00a0 Many people use a service like NewsRack on both the portable device and their home computer.\u00a0 Because of RSS syncing, an article is marked as read no matter where you read it.\u00a0 The problem in this simple and elegant construct is that nobody is looking at the ads Google thoughtfully provides to you in Google Reader.\u00a0 No ad views, then no ad revenue.\u00a0 Hence, \u201cnobody uses Google Reader.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now the scramble begins to find an RSS service which can connect many types of devices and which also happens to be accessible.\u00a0 The proprietary nature of some products makes this complicated.\u00a0 We welcome your thoughts and suggestions for how to resolve the great RSS quandary of 2013.<\/p>\n

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