By now, most of the web is abuzz with news of Google axing its Google Reader, which is a platform that most bloggers, including me, identify with. I’ve lived with Google Reader open while I worked for several years, either via FeedDemon and also directly. With the demise of Google Reader, Nick has also decided to kill FeedDemon, most of you might already be hunting for alternatives. Three popular names doing the rounds are Feedly, Newsblur and Netvibes. And, you even have a petition created on Change.org that has over 75,000 signatures at the time that I signed it. I…

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About a week back I noticed that the stats for all my feeds at Google’s Feedburner had turned to zero. Google acknowledged the issue a few days back. There has been a lot of speculation about the future of Feedburner with Google losing the Feedburner.jp domain as well as the discontinuing of the API and their Twitter account. Although Google has not come out publicly about what their plans are for Feedburner, I’ve decided to move away from Feedburner. I surveyed a few of the options available and decided that  was the best alternative. They have a detailed guide that…

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I’m sure most of you have heard of it already, but FeedDemon now includes synchronization for Google Reader as well as the already existing Newsgator, which has been a part of it ever since the beginning. I’ve been using FeedDemon for several years now and the best part of it is the complete synchronization it has with Newsgator. I’ve been running the beta versions and it’s turning out better with time. Google Reader synchronization is a work in progress but currently you can choose between Newsgator and Google Reader. Current users can choose to convert their feeds to Google Reader…

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Google Reader isn’t really my favorite feed reader since I prefer Feed Demon for this purpose. However, I know a lot of users who swear by Google Reader mainly because it is online and accessible from anywhere. Last year Google Reader added the ability to share feeds and added a sharing bookmarklet to make this task even easier. However, this was still limited in customization and you couldn’t leave notes as to why you wanted to share. Not anymore! Google Reader now adds the ability to add comments to your shared items. What’s new? You can comment on any items…

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I’m a big fan and a two year old user of FeedDemon. However, my feed statistics as well as those of several others I know, show that Google Reader is one of the maximum used online feed reading software. I, for one, hate the concept of a web based reader. Hence, when I stumbled upon ReadAir [Via: Google Inside], I decided to give it a shot. ReadAir is an OSX Themed Desktop Client for Mac or Windows built with Adobe Air. You login to you Google Account and it fetches all your feeds. This is still a very experimental version…

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The first release candidate of FeedDemon is out today and the major changes are: Added: Embedded ads via The Deck Added: Cleanup Wizard and Panic Button can now be limited to specific folders Added: Separate confirmation before removing a feed, watch or clippings folder that contains tagged items Changed: Simplified Cleanup Wizard (now a simple dialog instead of a wizard) Changed: Cleanup Wizard now defaults to not removing tagged items Fixed: Embedded video overlaps fixed header in newspaper (only partially fixed in previous versions) Fixed: “Share” icon fails when synching with NGES (150640) Fixed: Clicking the previously selected feed/folder doesn’t…

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Spent the last few days working on WordPress plugins and have managed to churn out three of them. Add to Feed Add to Feed is a feed enhancement plugin that allows you to easily add a copyright notice and custom text/HTML to your WordPress blog feed. The custom text can be entered before and/or after the content of your blog post. GreyBox Integrator GreyBox is a script can be used to display websites, images and other content in a beautiful way. GreyBox Integrator provides a one-click installation of GreyBox on your WordPress blog. WP-Niceforms Niceforms is a script that will…

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One little known and even lesser used feature of Feedburner is called MyBrand. MyBrand lets you use your own domain name to host your feed instead of feedproxy.google.com or feeds.feedburner.com. e.g. I could change my feed address from feedproxy.google.com/Techtites to feeds.techtites.com/Techtites The first step is to decide what domain you wish to use for your feeds. If you have some kind of blog network or a parent company, then this should ideally be your domain. Infact, you can even use a completely different domain name just for feeds. Let’s stick to feeds.techtites.com for now. We’ll enter that URL in Step…

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Using FeedBlitz or any third party service requires your visitors to move away from your site when they are subscribing or using that service. Google’s Custom Search Engine as well as Adsense for Search ensured that visitors stayed on your site by embedding custom forms on pages of your site. Now, FeedBlitz has introduced Embedded Subscription Forms. For this you need to login to FeedBlitz and navigate to Newsletters > Forms > Subscription Forms. You need to create a page on your site with the code in Step 1 of the screenshot above and upload the same on the site….

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My favourite feed reader FeedDemon is now sporting a brand new 2.8 Beta 2. I have been using FeedDemon for nearly two years now and never looked back. Infact, I even started using NewsGator Go! for my Nokia N73 to read feeds when on the move. Few Changes in 2.8? Items can now be tagged and these tags are synchronized with your NewsGator Account New “Share Icon” on the newspaper allows you to quickly add items to your shared clippings FeedDemon by default only synchronizes New items thereby reducing the bandwidth used and speeding up the update process Toolbar cleaned…

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