So after trying Sage (the excellent Firefox extension addon) many moons ago but concluding RSS readers should be hosted, I went through Rojo, Newsgator, Bloglines and some terrible ones I can’t even remember the name of, but none were what I was looking for. I also tried an early version of Google Reader and for all the good points about it I couldn’t stand the interface.
Eventually I found one I loved, and though I never did quite get around to recommending you all the excellant Newshutch.1 RSS reader many others did (37 Signals and Pstam). Unfortunately they have decided to close the site and after ‘learning a lot’, Nathan and the team(?) have decided its time to move on. I thank them for their effort, but I am really sad to see them go; 18 months of RSS satisfaction.
So I am back to where I started, well almost. One of these feeds that I subscribed to is the journal of John Hicks, a designer based in the Cotsworlds, and for many months now he has been spamming us with his incessant ramblings (concise text actually but it makes for a better story) about his gReader theme. Never paying much attention till the day that my preferred option abandoned me I decided to give it a try.
Hicks’s beautification of Google Reader, in a similar vein to the unfinished Shuttle / WordPress exercise or Steve Smiths Tiger Admin Panel, has been achieved by releasing some modified css that gives a this RSS reader a new lease of life. Full instructions are here and you can download the theme from his site. This improvement to Google Reader softens my loss. Kudos to you Mr Hicks and your incessant ramblings!
I don’t know what I would do these days without Google Reader!
Yeah, I admit it, I think it rocks! Beginning to get that over reliance on Google like everyone has with Microsoft but I am not gonna stop using the best news reader just because of it.