Shawn Blanc

Lex Friedman tried out oodles of RSS services and apps so that you wouldn’t have to. He’s using Feedbin as the backend, syncing to Reeder on the iPhone, Mr. Reader on the iPad, and then using the browser on the Mac (this was obviously written before today’s ReadKit update).

Me? I’m using Feed Wrangler as the backend, syncing to Mr. Reader on the iPad and ReadKit on the Mac (while waiting for Reeder’s update that will support Feed Wrangler).

Been holding your breath for a Mac app that supports Feed Wrangler or Feedbin? Me too. Well now you have it thanks to today’s update to ReadKit. ReadKit also supports Fever, Instapaper, Pinboard, Pocket, Feedbin, and more. Hot dang. (Now if only it had some keyboard love.)

Just $5 on the Mac App Store.

Jeremy Olson, while in the midst of an iOS 7-friendly redesign of his app, Hours, has written down some great points about redesigning an app for iOS 7:

Winning apps won’t merely take Apple’s default look and mimic it. Think about how boring it would be if all of our apps looked like iOS 7 Calendar or Settings. It would get old really fast. But that’s nothing new. Think about if all the apps on iOS 6 looked like iOS 6 Calendar and settings… Yep, it would be really boring.

Feed Wrangler is my Google Reader alternative of choice — its Smart Streams, filters, and Instapaper integration are very clever. However, I’m not the biggest fan of the native apps.

Fortunately Reeder has announced its plan to support Feed Wrangler. And today Mr. Reader was updated to support Feed Wrangler, Fever, Feedbin, Feedly, and more.

I downloaded the Mr. Reader update and logged into my Feed Wrangler account without any trouble. It took a few sync attempts before everything downloaded, but then it all worked just fine. After marking an item as read or starred in Mr. Reader, that same item’s state would be synced to the Feed Wrangler iPhone app and on the website. Just as it should be.

Most of all, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mr. Reader treats Smart Streams and filters like first-class citizens. Tapping and holding on one of them in the side bar brings up the option to edit. From there I can add or remove search terms, and select which feeds I want included in the stream, etc. The only thing missing is the ability to create new streams or filters from within Mr. Reader.

Update: You can add a smart stream or filter: just tap and hold the “plus” icon in the top-left corner. (Thanks for the tip, Ed.)

Mat Honan has a fun profile of Betaworks and their Digg team’s race to ship a Google Reader replacement:

McLaughlin saw a blog post in the Fall of 2012 speculating that Google Reader, choked of resources, was shutting down. He sent a teasing note to a friend at Google offering to “take it off their hands.” To his surprise, he got a serious reply. Google, his friend replied, had concluded that it couldn’t sell the name, user data, or code base (which would only run on their servers) and so there was nothing to actually buy.

The following February, McLaughlin, now full-time at Digg, bumped into this same pal at a TED conference. The friend warned him to act fast if he really did want to develop a Reader. “He said ‘I’m not telling you anything, but we’re not going to keep this thing around forever and maybe you want to have something ready by the end of the year.”

But instead of year’s end Google announced plans to shutter Google Reader on July 1. That same night, Digg put up a blog post announcing that it was going to build a replacement. The Internet went crazy.

Stephen Hackett:

iOS 7 is defined by thin text and lots of white space, and the OS X Mavericks artwork closely matches that aesthetic.

However, Mavericks doesn’t bring a sweeping UI overhaul to OS X. While iBooks, Maps and a handful of other new features are being added with this release, the big changes coming to OS X this fall are under the hood.

To get an idea of what OS X (10.10? 11?) might look like with an iOS 7-inspired redesign, look no further than Rdio’s Mac app. The Rdio app on iOS is one of the most iOS 7-like app out there right now.

Great dissertation by Alex Kessinger on the current state of feed readers and the feed reader market, as well as an excellent look at RSS in general and why it’s just so darn awesome to be your own news desk editor. (Via Brent Simmons.)

Great overview of some easy ways to encrypt your computer’s hard drive and your public internet usage (such as when you’re at a coffee shop).

Also, Ben’s hypothetical worst-case scenario for a total 1Password breach is smart. In fact, I do exactly what he recommends: my primary and secondary email passwords, as well as my Dropbox password are each unique and strong passwords which are easy enough for me to commit to memory. All others are who knows what.

Not your average Instagram video. This one’s a stop-motion movie that uses over 1,600 Instagram pictures.

Andrew Kim:

Last week, I went to a Microsoft Store and bought a Nokia Lumia 920. I frequently say that Nokia has some of the best looking phones in the market today and have also publicly shown my admiration for Windows Phone. However, these things have never convinced me to switch perviously. So the question is, why now?

Well, it’s iOS 7.

Andrew has now had his Windows phone for about a week, and he shares some of the differences (good and bad) between the hardware and the software.

It’s an interesting move. iOS 7 is certainly polarizing. I wonder how many others, will, like Andrew Kim, switch to a different phone and OS, or else just hold out and refuse to update their current device to iOS 7.

Last year there was a holdout of people who didn’t update from iOS 5 to 6 because of the issues with Apple’s Maps app. But in that scenario the remnants at least had a light at the end of the tunnel: the hope and expectation that Google would release their own maps app. And Google did.

With iOS 7, however, there is no “light at the end of the tunnel” for those who don’t like the new look.

Casey Liss considers that maybe the new-to-iOS 7 swipe-left-to-right-to-go back gesture is a hint at a forthcoming bigger iPhone.

Maybe.

But a bigger iPhone certainly isn’t needed to appreciate the new gesture. If you’ve used an app like Riposte that already implements that gesture, you know it’s more than just an easier way to go back without having to strrreeeetch your thumb up to the Back Button.

Swiping to go back feels natural. After using Riposte for a while, the gesture had become one of those I found myself using in many other apps — similar to how I was always trying pull to refresh in apps that didn’t even support it, I’ve begun swiping right to go back in apps that don’t support it.

And now, on my iOS 7 test device, I’m using the gesture all over the place. Aside from Control Center, it may be my favorite new feature in iOS 7.

Guess when that quote was written.

I bet you didn’t guess it was written in 1891. Me neither. This xkcd comic gives a little bit of perspective regarding the “fast pace” of our modern life. (Via Kottke.)

I love the style of videos that Trey Hill has been posting on Instagram. Rather than making mini-movies or panning shots, his videos are more like living pictures. (Hat tip to Matt Alexander.)