Phil Bradley's weblog

Another fake Facebook page; Amazon Kindle Fire.

I was alerted to the existence of another Facebook fake page yesterday - many thanks Sue!

This is the real page:

Please note the number of likes - 1.3 million, and 14,000 talking about the page. If you scroll down the page you will see dozens of posts - which is exactly what you should see. Now here's the fake:

Now here's the fake:

Note the full stop after Fire, the small number of likes, and there's a total lack of content further down the page. You could also wonder why this page is listed under 'Transport and Freight' rather than 'Product and Service'. Moreover, it's not the only scam out there; running a search for the product gives us:

Note the ones with the full stop after the name! It's clearly an issue that Facebook simply doesn't want to address, so if you see one of these pages, please report it using the cog wheel option and 'Report page' because unless we all do it, Facebook won't do anything about it.

MultiPLX

RSS Reader Reimagined I got asked to take a look at a new RSS reader today, called MultiPLX. This is what they say about themselves: "

MultiPLX is a visual RSS Reader and works as a full web service, designed from ground-up to be as scalable and fast as Google Reader. "Although there are many variants that are trying to imitate Google Reader at the moment, most of them are desktop clients or mobile apps that depend on Google Reader engine. MultiPLX is a full web based service with a back-end that can scale-up to serve millions of users, and billions of feed posts each day with a speed that is unmatched even in desktop clients." said Emre Kosmaz founder of MultiPLX. "The speed and scalability of Google Reader is not something you can deliver overnight and we have been working on this project to be par with Google Reader for the last 8 months" he added. MultiPLX already supports seamless migration from Google Reader with capability to import OPML files through Google Takeout.

I've taken a look - it took me a few moments to sort out my Google OPML file, but once that was sorted I was up and running. This is what the screen looks like:

I have to say that personally, I'm not a fan. I found the boxes rather too large - with RSS feeds I tend to expect something more compact, with lines of headlines, rather than boxes. For me this looked more like a Zite or Flipboard concept, and I'm just not sure how well that works on a desktop or laptop. I talked about my concerns with the founder, who was a very nice chap, and who responded virtually instantaneously, which is always a good sign. He's looking to introduce more functionality of the type that I've mentioned in the near future, so I think that MultiPLX is worth keeping an eye on. When they add new functionality I shall revisit it and let you have more details. In the meantime, if you want to try it out yourself you can do so - you need the promo code when you go to sign up, which is FRIENDS so give it a whirl.

Rockmelt closes/opens

It's unlikely, but you may recall from the dim and distant past Rockmelt a social browser. The idea was that it would constantly pull in content and information from your social networks, keeping you update while you were busy doing other stuff. It's not a browser that I used that often, and neither did anyone else - they only had about 4 million users. Consequently they've decided to close the browser, and reopen as a social media/news curation tool. Log in with your Facebook/Twitter credentials, choose from a preassigned list of content options and see what new information is available for you. It looks very much like this:

It does pop up news constantly, and it's got a very smooth approach to doing so, but stuff like this is already dealt with very well by the likes of Zite and Flipboard. I'm not entirely sure what Rockmelt can bring to the game to be honest - I'm not really seeing anything new here.

Talkwalker Alerts

A nice, free and easy alternative to Google Alerts . You can monitor the Web for interesting new content about your name, brand, competitors, events or any favourite topic with Talkwalker Alerts! Talkwalker Alerts are an easy and free alerting service that provides email updates of the latest relevant mentions on the Web directly to your email box or RSS feed reader.Well, that's what they say.

I tried it out, and it looks exactly like a Google alert service.

It will create an account for you, so that you go in and change the alerts whenever you need to. There doesn't seem to be a limit on the alerts that you can create, and it's a free service, so you might want to give it a go. It's different to Mention, which I'm still enjoying using since you can really do a precision search - I'm presuming that it pulls its data from Google.

 

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There's much concern running around at the moment relating to the inability of Google Alerts to 'do their thing' properly, and people are worrying that they might be on the kill list. It's a reasonable fear, and something that Google is going to have to get used to - with the speed they kill things, plus the fact that it doesn't matter how many people like or rely on something, we've got to get used to alternatives. Ideally, move to them as well I think. Anyway, if you're looking for an alternative to Google Alerts, you could do worse than try Mention. It's a really good tool that comes in a variety of flavours - you can download it and use as a standalone outside of the browser (which quite frankly just feels weird to me), you can run it from within your browser, or you can use it on a smartphone.

The concept is pretty basic - just tell it what you're interested in being kept up to date on. Add words, exclude words, and choose where you want Mention to look - everywhere that it can, or limit it in some way to websites, twitter, comments and so on. Everything is updated in real time - I'm getting used to a little popup appearing on the screen which is very helpful. You can mark stuff as favorites, you can assign a task to any user with whom you've shared this alert. Ask them to read, share or comment on a mention and keep a track of these actions with the task list. You can share your alert with anyone, whether or not they are a user of mention. You can connect any Facebook or Twitter account to an alert and manage multiple accounts. You can also search within your mentions as well, which is very helpful. 

The page looks a bit like this - sorry, it's an alert for my name, but it could be a company name, event, conference - anything you like.

It's very simple to use, and I'm really enjoying it. There are both free and paid accounts, with the freebie limiting you to 500 mentions. If you find that you're running through those quite quickly, simply change what you ask Mention to look for - and cut out maybe something heavy, like Twitter, which you can monitor differently anyway. Give it a go, if you have time - it may change the way that you consider alerts.If you want to try it out, here's an invitation! (It doesn't get you anything extra, but in the interests of transparency, gets me an extra 100 mentions on my free account.)

 

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Even more (33) Google Reader alternatives

The other day I gave you 20 alternatives to Google Reader. Now I'm giving you a whole bunch more that I've found. I haven't tried the vast majority of them, so can't vouch for them, but I'll be sure to tell you what I think! (Note: since I'm going to probably be referring to 'Google Reader' quite a lot, I'm shortening it to GR for the sake of my sanity and fingers)

Android Rivers is, as the name suggests, designed for Android devices.

BackStitch was one that I liked the look of; very smooth. Take a look.

BazQux looks quite fun, as it pulls in comments from Facebook groups and G+ communities as well.

Bloglovin is a straight replacement for GR, and it also works on IOS. You can sign up either direct or via Facebook, and can import your GR feeds. I didn't really like the results - the posts were in a large format and I couldn't see a way to reduce this to just headlines.

BlogRoll is in development. Large, boxy news items. Good perhaps if you only read half a dozen blogs etc. Otherwise, totally inpractical from what I could tell.

Bookmarkchamp is a combination bookmark/RSS reader, but it doesn't work in IE. Looked quite traditional though.

Dotdotdot is designed for use with a tablet, and pulls all your digital reading together. From the demo it looks quite nice.

Feedbin looked quite nice and traditional. It was also $2 a month. Why would I guys, when there are so many free ones out there? Seriously!

Feedspot needs a clue, so here it is. Don't make me sign up before I can see what you're offering! It says it's 'rethinking the RSS reader', but so what? Show me what you've got at the outset!!

Fever says of itself "Your current feed reader is full of unread items. You’re hesitant to subscribe to any more feeds because you can't keep up with your existing subs. Maybe you've even abandoned feeds altogether." It also says $30. Pass.

FrontPage. Seems to be a GR replacement, but says very little, but it's designed for tablets and phones.

IFTTT is a great little tool that some tech savvy people are really into 'if this, then that' lets you create your own feeds. You may love that idea, or prefer something that's really been set up already for you.

Intigi is a marketing tool more than a reader from what I can see, but it has RSS elements to it. However it also has $19 a month attached to it. Not for the average reader then!

Memamsa looked quite reasonable, but a little on the 'boxy' side when it comes to listing posts. On the bright side, I really liked their graphic header!

Msgboy says of itself "Msgboy delivers a custom feed of stories in realtime, all based on websites you've bookmarked and visited most often. You can customize your feed so you see more of what you want and less of what you don't." It's also Chrome only, so they obviously don't really care at all about the other folk out there, so why should I care about them?

My Yahoo is Yahoo News with a personal twist. I never really think of Yahoo these days at all, which is bad of me I guess. If you however like Yahoo, take a peek.

News Maven is setting itself up as a GR replacement, launching in April. Says nothing else on the site which to be honest, is pretty damn stupid if you ask me. Why would I wait, in the hope that it's good?

NuesByte is a traditional GR lookalike.

Player.fm is an oddity on the list because while it's a news curation tool, it's via podcast, radio news items and so on. It looked as though it would be quite fun, but it's not a GR alternative in any great sense.

Prismatic is a news curation tool. Log in with your social media credentials from the usual suspects and read news stories. Looked a little like Zite, but I didn't get an account with this one, so I could be wrong - but it had the block/image based news squares of information look to it.

Protopage is more of a start page like Netvibes, but it displays RSS feeds in the start page type of news box.

RSSMiner has the traditional GR list of blogs etc down the left, and posts in the main pane in the right.

RSSOwl looks like it's nice, but it's a download product. Instant turn off.

Selfoss has a traditional GR feel, but you need to install it on your own server, which is more than most of us can manage, or would want to, so you'll probably pass on this by the time you get to line 4 which reads "Ensure that you have mod_rewrite and mod_headers enabled."

Skimfeed is minimalist RSS reading taken to the limit. Couldn't see any way to customise it or create an account though.

Skim.me is apparently a visual tool to let you get through the news quickly. However, since it wouldn't let me sign up via Facebook (which is what it offered) I have no way of telling you anything else about it.

Skimr is a straight forward listing of feeds, and when you register you can add your own, and import an OPML file. However, in order to see the updates you have to choose from the list that you've created, so it's a rather slow approach - but I can see how it would work for a small number of feeds.

Thunderbird is not only an email package, it reads RSS as well. You probably won't be interested in this one unless you're looking for a new mail client as well, but if you are, this is worth a peek.

TinyTinyRSS is more of the traditional menu of resources on the left, pane of headlines on the right approach, so if you're a dedicated GR user, this may well look very familiar. It's also very much a one person operation, and I *think* you have to download stuff to use it, but it was very confusing at that point, so I tiptoed quietly away.

Viafeeds says "What makes it different is that we're going to charge money for it, which means we'll be able to continue investing time and resources into it. And everyone wants that, right?" Apparently not, no. You also have to wait a few months. Too late there guys!

Waurb is more of a news curation tool than an RSS alternative. Log in via Facebook, choose your interests from a small collection of subject areas and it will pull back content for you. I certainly found some useful material, but a lot that wasn't, so while it was a fun tool to look at, it's not going to be a GR replacement for you.

Wavii is a news curation tool that pulls content based on your Facebook/Twitter interests. It was quite accurate, but I wasn't overly taken with it personally. Too large and clunky were the results (as Yoda might say).

1kpl.us is a very traditional RSS/Atom reader with a real GR feel to it. Very simple, basic no frills approach.

20 Alternatives to Google Reader

So the really big news yesterday, outstripping that of a new Pope is the news that Google is Powering Down Google Reader, which for many people is a total disaster. Google's hypocrisy is taken to entirely new heights in their post on the matter; they say "We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too." No, what they really mean is 'we don't care'. This is the usual typical stance that Google takes - a regretful 'but there's nothing we can do about it'. They are citing the decreased use of the product as the reason for closure, but if they'd wanted to I am absolutely sure that they could have done something to stop that decrease - there was some integration into G+ but they could have done a great deal more. I also love the line "as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience." Tell me, how are self drive cars going to make my user experience better? At least be honest enough to say that 'we're pouring our energy into products that make more money for us' because that's the real bottom line. Google Reader doesn't bring in the eyeballs on adverts, so it's got to go. It really IS that simple.

So, what are the alternatives? There are surprisingly a fair number of them, but it depends on the platform that you use.

Tablet Devices

If you use tablets, you have an interesting array of choices. You can pull up news via Zite, which is an excellent tool and one that I use daily. It has recently had a makeover, which makes it even more interesting. It works in a rather different way to Google Reader, in that it pulls together stories for you based on your interests, which it presents in a visual magazine type format on the screen for you. You can then touch a story to see the entire thing, and tell Zite if you want to see more or less stories like that in the future, and if you like it. You can also highlight the source and ask for more or less from that source.
You can quickly flick through pages, open your list of resources on the top right hand side, and search for new material. However, you cannot import content from Google Reader, and you can't customise to the same extent.

Pulse is another alternative that works well with tablets. This is a more traditional RSS type reader in that you can set up a number of tabs, and then choose feeds to populate them. The posts appear in magazine format again, and it's easy enough to flick through them as needed, clicking to view the entire story. This is also available on the web, which makes a nice change. It looks like this:

There is the ever favourite Flipboard, which lots of people rave about, but I've never particularly cared for. This one allows you to link your social media accounts to it, so it's easier to see what your friends and colleagues are doing.

Alternatively, you can try News 360, Trap!t which works with social media accounts, Sulia, or Relevance. Or if you don't like those, try Feedly, which does pull content directly from your Google Reader account AND works on Firefox as well. Another very similar product is The Feed, which also takes content directly from your Reader account and displays it very neatly. If you really want to keep the Google Reader feel, these are the two that I would be inclined to look at first.

This is Feedly - don't be put off by the dark main part of the screen, it does this only when the user is concentrating on the list of feeds:

This is the screenshot from The Feed:

Web based news curation tools

There are a number of tools that you can use to pull information directly into your email accounts. Agreed, not the same thing as a Google Reader, but if we're looking at alternatives, we need to widen the net a little.

You can have News.Me which pulls data down based on your social media networks, but it only looks at the really big stories, so this is really more of an adjunct rather than replacement. Scoop.it is a great tool, but you do have to really go to the pages that have been created by people, so it's more like visiting their weblogs directly. Curate.me again pulls up stories for you in your email, but also on a web page, but it doesn't give you the same control that Google Reader does. Paper.li is a fun tool and it pulls up interesting resources for you, and you can personalise it - here's The Phil Bradley Daily for example. However, once again it's a rather different concept.

RSS Reader alternatives

So if you're not happy with anything I've looked at so far, lets go for some more traditional RSS readers. The first one that I would really recommend looking at is Netvibes. I love Netvibes with a passion - it's a start page, you can publish your own content for the world to see, and it's a pretty good RSS reader as well. More to the point, it looks like a traditional reader as well, although if you prefer, these can also look like widgets too.

I would recommend taking a look at this one, not just because of the RSS aspect, but because if you start to use Netvibes it will make your entire life on the web easier, guaranteed.

A beta outfit, The Old Reader is just starting up (so no screenshot!) but it does allow you to pull your Google Reader content right into their service. Another new entrant into the field is Taptu, available for web and tablet, plus smartphone. I have not used this myself, but it's getting good reviews, but it's another primarily news aggregation tool, pulling content from Twitter and Facebook contacts.

How about an oldie and a goodie? Yes, I'm thinking of Bloglines. It's still out there, and you can still use it. I haven't been back to it in quite some time, but it's a possible that's worth trying.

You could take a look at News Is Free, which you can use without creating an account if you just want headline stuff, but you can obviously open an account to use on the web. There are over 30K of RSS feeds you can choose from, but if you want to add your own, you'll have to go down the premium route.

As I mentioned, Feedly works on the web as well as tablet and they have a very handy blog entry on migrating your Google Reader account directly to their product. Newsblur is also quite traditional in its approach, but you can only have 64 feeds, unless you pay them $1 a month, which provides unlimited feeds, which sounds like a good deal to me. It also has a nice traditional feel about it.

How about downloading your own reader onto your desktop? It's a bit of a weird idea I agree, but when I first started out using RSS I used a product that was on the desktop, though it's so long ago I can't remember the name.  Feedreader is a download, and it's also available on the web too.

Summary

None of these tools are going to be exactly what you want. But then at some point in the dim and distant past you hadn't tried Google Reader, and it was a new experience. If it's any consolation I haven't used Google Reader in a while, though I would peek at it maybe once or twice a week. I prefer to use the tablet tools that I mentioned, and I get most of what I need from Zite, Pulse and Twitter. It takes a while to get used to the idea that you might be missing news, because you can't tailor the tool to your exact requirements, but then I always worried if I was missing really good blogs, so the worry stays, just about something slightly different. The important point in all of this is the networks that you have created. If you have good networks on Twitter and Facebook for example, that's key to a Google Reader free world, since your contacts will find the good stuff and keep you up to date. So yes, it's going to be a real wrench, but there are other options available to you.

SyndiFeed

via syndifeed.com

If you're looking for a different way to keep up to date with your favourite websites then you probably use an RSS reader. Syndifeed is hoping to change that by trying to provide you with an experience similar to that which tablet users get with Flipboard and Zite. Simply register and discover sites that you're interested in. Syndifeed will then pull in stories for you in a magazine based format.

I wasn't overly excited with it - the interface was not very sophisticated in comparison to other applications that I've played with, but if you're new to this method of news curation, you might find it worth exploring.

 

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Infonary

is a News Search Engine, with Latest Headlines, Top Searches Today, Latest Updates, News Videos, News Aggregator according to their site. Infonary has a very basic page style as you can see from the home page:

The home defaulted to the UK for me, and provided me with simple RSS style headlines from 12 newspapers, ITN video news from YouTube, UK news from DailyMotion and 3 sports streams. Tabbed options include breaking news, politics, business, sports, entertainment and all the other usual suspects. A feature that I particularly liked was the ability to look at news from other countries, and there was a very wide selection available.

In summary, it does a good job of pulling in RSS feeds from different news sources providing users with a quick and easy overview. However, for any indepth information or analysis of news, you still can't do much better than Silobreaker in my opinion.

Pulse on the web

Pulse is one of my favourite news curation tools - it's simple and easy to use, and fits perfectly on the iPad. You can choose a variety of different sources - RSS feeds, blogs and so on and it will create a nice little magazine format for you. They've now brought it onto the web, where it's just as good. It looks a bit like this:

Down the left hand side of the screen you have the sources that you are interested in, split into 5 self defined categories. Simply click on the boxes, read the story directly from the page, rinse and repeat. A nice, fast and effective way to read your feeds.