An open source Google Reader replacement: Sismics Reader

http://www.sismics.com/reader/

by jb17 • 13 years ago

55 49 13 years ago

jzelinskie• 13 years ago

This looks pretty promising. Judging from the demo, they have the UI close enough. They need to offer it as a service, though. I like that I have the freedom to run my own server, but I really don't want to have to bother in practice.

abrowne5• 13 years ago

I agree. This — service plus open source — is the model for my Google Reader replacement of choice, FeedHQ [1].

[1] http://feedhq.org/

phillmv• 13 years ago

Do they have a demo up anywhere?

Numberwang• 13 years ago

What is it with every new site developed by HN:ers. No screenshots and required signup to learn more.

gyaresu• 13 years ago

Sorry about posting here. Couldn't find a bug report link on your website:

wheezy/sid (Really Mint Linux but whatever)

openjdk-7-jre:i386

$ sudo dpkg -i reader-1.1.1.deb

dpkg: error processing reader-1.1.1.deb (--install):

parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control' near line 2 package 'reader':

error in Version string '${reader.version}': version number does not start with digit

Errors were encountered while processing: reader-1.1.1.deb

Hope that helps.

Jendib8• 13 years ago

Thank you, I have just fix the issue on Debian packaging

platz• 13 years ago

I like the decisions so far! On a pure style/preference note, I prefer content over chrome to an almost absurd degree - the margins around the individual posts could be tighter maybe?

Jendib8• 13 years ago

Sure, there is a theming system, so you can fully customize the CSS

abrowne5• 13 years ago

Looks good, and I like the mobile web view. Key missing feature for me: oldest-first view.

[Edit]: Also, keyboard shortcuts (most important for me: jk for next/previous).

Jendib8• 13 years ago

Keyboard shortcuts should be in the next release (there is an issue about it on GitHub)

webwanderings3• 13 years ago

How is this a desktop client and mobile at the same time?

dubcanada• 13 years ago

Good old Java! Though I personally would never want what is suppose to be a slim low memory footprint application (reading text) to be ran by Java. But that's more of a personal objection, and has nothing to do with the actual product.

webwanderings3• 13 years ago

But where does the feeds reside, local or remote?

Jendib8• 13 years ago

We use CSS media queries to adapt the UI with the screen size

Spittie2• 13 years ago

Seems good, I like it. I might try it later on my server (hopefully it's not too heavy on the system, since I'm going to try it in a small vps).

But it's still another reader that I'll probably not use. Why? Because since there isn't an open standard for RSS reader I can't use it with the client I want.

I'm not saying it's your fault, as it sure isn't. But it's sad that we didn't learn this from the death of Google Reader. There were some talk about creating an open standard right after it's death, but nothing major came out of it.

This is also why I'm still using Google Reader, because every RSS reader out of there doesn't have either a mobile client or a website that I like. If there were an open standard, I could use the mobile client I want, the desktop client I want, and rely on the backend for synchronization and reading on computer without a desktop client.

Jendib8• 13 years ago

This is true there isn't a standard for RSS feeds synchronizer, but Sismics Reader provide an open JSON API, so you can write whatever client you want, on any platform you prefer

Spittie2• 13 years ago

This is great, but every developer has to include your API to get it's app working with your service. And he has to do it for every service that he want to support (Feedly, FeedBin, Feever, NewsBlur...).

My rant was not about Sismics not providing an API, but the lack of a standard open API for RSS readers. Beside that, Sismics seems pretty great.

martingordon• 13 years ago

I'm down to wire for this reason as well. I use Reeder everywhere and no other client has come close to matching it.

jeena6• 13 years ago

Here is someone who started thinking about a protocol for RSS sync: https://github.com/ArturoVM/pond/wiki/API-Documentation

donretag• 13 years ago

An RSS reader without synchronization is not a Google Reader replacement.

richardlblair2• 13 years ago

Good thing it's on github. I'm sure pull requests are welcome :P

Jendib8• 13 years ago

Of course they are :)

idm• 13 years ago

According to this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5947276

feeds are synced by the server

tracker12• 13 years ago

My initial thought was a portable version of this could be useful... I don't use thunderbird much these days, but for several years had my tbird profile symlinked to a dropbox directory. The only irritation was the notices from dropbox if I accidentally left tbird open at another location.

I imagine the same or similar could work here too.

shmerl4• 13 years ago

Someone suggested using TinyTinyRSS + Liferea.

jeena6• 13 years ago

I wasn't able to get Liferea to work with TTRSS, and I really tried :-/. Therefor I wrote one myself but it has only the possibility to show posts, no list or anything because I never used that http://jabs.nu/feedthemonkey I assume most of the people will not be comfortable with it.

bentcorner• 13 years ago

Is the web client in TTRSS that terrible?

I deployed TTRSS to Azure pretty easily, although auto-refreshing the feeds is harder to figure out. The Web UI seemed good enough. Not as easy as Google Reader but serviceable.

Semaphor2• 13 years ago

Looks nice, just ran the installer on my Windows machine and besides needing 3 restarts for it to finally work, it is too buggy to use.

Importing my feeds works for 5 of them for a short while, after getting the items for the 5th feed it reverts to thinking I have no feeds at all.

Jendib8• 13 years ago

Hi, I'm one of the 2 developers, can you add an issue on GitHub and join your XML, so we can fix this?

Semaphor2• 13 years ago

Done, should have done it instantly, sorry for that :)

richardlblair2• 13 years ago

This is awesome. To those listing the faults: It's on github. Fork it, fix it, push it, pull (request) it.

astrojams• 13 years ago

An RSS reader that won't use the "j" and "K" keys to iterate forward and backwards through the articles is useless to me.

alex_doom• 13 years ago

Right? To me that's the only reason I stayed with Google for so long, key commands to quickly jump through several hundred items.

codereflection• 13 years ago

Agreed.

However - pull request.

jeena6• 13 years ago

A Google Reader replacement for me is some sync-server with which I can sync read/unread between a native feed reader on my iPhone, my ThinkPad, my Android tablet and my iMac.

tracker12• 13 years ago

With all the cloud DBs available... one would think you could simply target one of them as a platform (say mongodb) and that you could define a set of collections/tables/account to use. You could get quite a bit of data in a free account level with couchbase or mongolab. You wouldn't even need to store the full article, just the feeds, urls, dtm and read status... you could do more, but it could work.

For that matter, one could come up with such a "MyData" system that works with the DropBox API or something similar.

jeena6• 13 years ago

I would like just a protocol for which I or basically anyone could implement a server and a client, kind of like SMTP and IMAP for email (but as a REST service or something easier)

swanson• 13 years ago

And as soon as Reeder (iOS/Mac), Press (Android), gReader (Android) and whatever Windows people use agree on a common API and all support adding your own server URL, then it will be possible.

The problem is that all of the clients seem to want to hitch up with another free 3rd party service :(

jeena6• 13 years ago

Yeah I hoped someone would come up with such a protocol, I myself been writing about that last year already, but sadly 3rd party service it seems to become.

handelaar• 13 years ago

Installed on Windows. OK. Presents a login prompt. Accepts no username that exists on the system.

/uninstall

An open source Google Reader replacement: Sismics Reader

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