From One Old Dog to any Others ....

So, last week I raised the question of what the heck is going on with Blogger Reader?  Got several helpful answers and just to prove that I am not a totally old dog (there is a five-letter word that many of my friends would choose ...) I want to share what I have learned. 

Technically, it is Google Reader that is going away at the end of June, not precisely "Blogger Reader", but apparently they are the same thing!  So, why couldn't they say so more directly?  No clue. 

There are at least two other readers readily available.  One is BlogLovin (www.Bloglovin.com) and Feedly (www.Feedly.com).  I signed up for both just to be sure I was covered, but will probably only use one of them.  Here are my first impressions:

BlogLovin was a little more difficult to sign up for, but not much.  It wanted an email address and then sent me an email with a link to complete the process.  (My email thought the message was spam and blocked it - twice - but I finally found it and from there it took only seconds to complete my enrollment.)  It asked permission to upload my "Google Reader" and took about 20 seconds to upload all of the blogs I follow.  They are displayed just like in Blogger Reader, and you access the same way.  It may take one additional click.  I commented on a blog while I was there and it worked exactly the same way. 

Feedly didn't make me sign up for an account.  It seemed to already know me and already have my reading list.  It may be that it is Google, or perhaps just Big Brother.  It gave me a couple of choices for how I want to display my reading list, but seemed fine.   I don't particularly like the way it looks (just not as attractive as Blogger) but it seems to work fine.  Apparently "they" are in the processing of upgrading, migrating or something and there will be some additional changes in the next two weeks.  So, things may look a little different in a couple of weeks. 

Both appear to work on tablets, too, altho I have not tried them on mine.  That's the next step. 

So, for what it's worth ...  this was an easy trick for this old dog to learn.  And Apolonius said, "Come the edge.  They came to the edge; he pushed them off, and they flew."