This time you’ll have to leave

It’s time to pack my feed list and move away from Google reader, something that I had already tried and failed before, because this time the service will be shutdown by Google on the first day of July 2013.

The Internet is (mostly the tech community) in tumult, with every major tech news site writting something about it and big discussions taking place in many communities. You can say that this is too much and basically it’s only the shutdown of a service that’s using a technology already half dead, in that case I must disagree.

In my humble opinion, RSS still has a big role in today’s Internet usage and is one of the few really open technologies, that improve the flow of information and that don’t rely only on major sites with walled gardens that belong to big companies.

In my daily habits while I surf the Internet, Google Reader tops the ranking of most used “app”, when you count the in time spent (and the usefulness), it’s where I keep myself up to date with whats happening in the world, just to give you an example, here’s what the app has to say about my stats:

From your 39 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 736 items, clicked 43 items, starred 0 items, and emailed 0 items.

Since July 18, 2009 you have read a total of 29,114 items.

The discussions about the alternatives don’t have been very enlightening, many suggest apps like feedly and flipboard, these ones are pretty and run on tablets and cellphones but don’t fit to my usage, that magazine style thing (and I don’t own a tablet) doesn’t feel right, I need a full featured powerhouse tool with lots of flexibility.

One other option suggested was netvibes, but I’ve already tried this one in the last time and it let me down. So currently, the only web based options with good feedback left in my list are newsblur and theoldreader, which I didn’t had the time to try yet.

So do you know any other alternative that I should add to my test list?

Note: There is the possibility of desktop or self hosted software, but for now I’m trying to avoid those, so they will be the last resort.