I changed my RSS reader from Feedly to Inoreader.

The affordable Supporter plan I subscribed to is the lowest Inoreader tier but I chose it not because I want something cheap, it's just the plan happens to provide all the features I need. I left behind a lifetime Feedly Pro plan that allows me to use the product indefinitely at no cost.

Importing my feeds and folders from Feedly via the API was seamless and smooth.

Motivation

I had been using Feedly for ten years since March 13, 2013 when Google announced the shutdown of Google Reader. Over the years Feedly kept adding AI and enterprise features I didn't care about as an individual user. Although the Android app remained inadequate for a long time, Feedly is an okay product despite its frequent outages and performance issues.

I eventually grew dissatisfied with the reliability of Feedly and the company's drift away from the core RSS experience, which made me want to look for something new. A shameful new Feedly feature set the right timing to research a different newsreader.

I want a cloud RSS reader that synchronizes across platforms, particularly the web and Android. I had long heard great things about Inoreader, checked it out, loved it, and purchased a subscription.

First impressions

Inoreader has a clean and pleasant design with the right similarities to Feedly.

The general layout and the choice of keystrokes, mostly the same as Feedly, make the application immediately familiar and usable. Article presentation and formatting are better than Feedly's, which often doesn't render correctly certain page elements. For example, code blocks stand out nicely in Inoreader.

The web client is consistently fast and responsive. So far I haven't experienced the typical slowdowns and outages of Feedly.

What surprised me of Inoreader is text search actually works and instantaneously delivers accurate results. I hadn't seen these levels of search accuracy and performance in RSS readers since Google Reader. Compare this with Feedly's search, which takes several seconds and misses results I'm sure are there. Feedly search is an oxymoron.

A great Inoreader feature missing from Feedly is the ability to load the full text of the articles in partial feeds, it takes just a keypress. This alone is worth Inoreader.

The Chrome extension makes Inoreader double as a read later tool. My primary read later tool is Google Keep but I'm liking Inoreader's smooth workflow for saving and reading web pages.

The Android app has all the key features of the desktop version. For example, swiping down an article in a partial feed downloads the full text. Also, sharing to Inoreader a link to a website with an RSS feed prompts to subscribe to the feed or save the page for later. It's a no brainer, but the Feedly app doesn't support it.

Inoreader is making me rediscover RSS. Reading sessions felt like routine with Feedly, but Inoreader makes me eagerly anticipate sitting down and catching up with my favorite sources.

#blogging

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One year ago today I published the first post of this blog hosted at Write.as, ending a long quest for a better publishing platform.

I had grown frustrated with the clunkyness and limitations of Blogger, where I settled for the prior threee years. So I set out to research a lightweight blogging platform with good support for technical writing that could replace Blogger, and finally went with Write.as. One year and 225 posts later, I'd say Write.as was the right choice despite a major missing feature, post previews. I've never been so productive, neither with Blogger nor any other publishing platform.

Another fortunate decision, intentionally against the conventional wisdom of SEO, was to publish a personal blog that focuses on me rather than remaining confined in a specific niche. This let me write about new interests or experiences, adapting to the wandering and widening of my interests and activities.

The first year on Write.as was eventful. Two of my posts went viral on Hacker News, one on why I use a Chromebox and the other on my encounter with Medley Interlisp, and brought tens of thousands of views.

That was exciting. But over the past year I also joined the Fediverse, and sharing some of my blog posts there generated more interesting, meaninfgul, and lasting interactions than the drive-by traffic of viral posts.

Aside from the rewards and validation of such success metrics, an unexpected benefit of the first year of blogging at Write.as has been writing for an audience of one: me.

I'm using the blog more and more as a sort of lab journal for my hobby programming and tech projects. Since I work on a number of projects, and put them aside for some time before resuming, the blog has proven invaluable in getting back up to speed with projects or track useful resources by reviewing and referencing past posts.

So, even if nobody read my blog, I would still gain the most benefit from this personal space and online archive.

#blogging

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I fulfilled the requirements of the Bring Back Blogging challenge, i.e. posting at least three times over January of 2023. I published 8 posts with not much effort as this is more or less my average output. This is my first blogging challenge and I'm glad I took it as it set a realistic goal, not the usual death march.

#blogging

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My first Medley Interlisp blog post was shared on Hacker News, got over a hundred upvotes, and ended up on the front page, where it still is a day later after climbing up to number 5. So far my post received over 24K views, and counting.

I'm really glad Medley Interlisp is gaining some very well deserved attention.

#blogging #lisp

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I enrolled into Bring Back Blogging. It's a project to encourage and bring awareness to blogging by challenging bloggers to publish at least 3 posts in January of 2023, and enabling readers to discover content in the list of participating blogs that includes almost 140 so far. I blog regularly anyway, so it was a no brainer.

I shared Bring Back Blogging on Mastodon and my toot generated huge enthusiasm, with many saying they'll join.

#blogging

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This is the 200th post over 10 months of my blog hosted at Write.as. The milestone is even more significant considering I published 146 posts over 3 years to my previous blog hosted at the bloated, inflexible, and clunky old Blogger.

I credit the milestone in large part to Write.as, a lightweight blogging platform that nearly eliminates friction with its Markdown support and minimalist design.

Typing into the Write.as editing area is all it takes to insert, format, and present the content of a post. With Blogger, even basic text formatting requires laboriously moving and clicking the mouse to select text, click icons, pick menu items, and apply formatting. It all adds up to enough friction to dread the experience and be discouraged from posting.

I started this blog on February 28, 2022. I stumbled upon Write.as at the end of a long research process that led to the best platform for my technical writing needs.

#blogging

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Write.as, where this blog is hosted, supports embedding rich media from many social platforms and websites such as YouTube videos and Twitter tweets. It's enough to insert in a post the bare URL of the content to embed, on a line by itself, for Writes.as to render the media.

I wonder whether media embedding works also with Fediverse platforms, so this test post includes some of this content. Let's start with a toot of my Mastodon profile:

https://fosstodon.org/@amoroso/109360170388228216

Here is the URL of a PeerTube video:

https://diode.zone/w/9edtkEZ3QcmfMZStyrEjgB

Another option with PeerTube is to insert the HTML video embedding code, as Write.as renders some HTML in Markdown:

Does it work?

After checking out the published post I updated it to report on the embeds.

Write.as doesn't render the URLs of both the toot and the PeerTube video. The HTML embedding code does work, but the rendered video is not responsive and doesn't blend well with the page on mobile.

#blogging #fediverse

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The Fediverse presence @paolo@journal.paoloamoroso.com of this blog has some limitations and quirks, such as the way commenting is set up. Another quirk is if I edit an old blog post, a new Fediverse post ends up in the followers' Mastodon timelines.

#blogging

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This blog is hosted at Write.as and uses the default commenting system of the sister platform Remark.as. The Discuss... link in the footer of every post leads to the Remark.as comment box, which does the job but requires a paid account.

To provide alternate options I added to the footer a link to email me and now I'm experimenting with comments from the Fediverse.

The blog has the Fediverse presence @paolo@journal.paoloamoroso.com you can follow. On Mastodon you'll receive a toot for every new blog post. To comment, reply as usual to the toot. But be sure not to delete my Mastodon handle @amoroso@fosstodon.org prefilled in the edit box, which is different from @paolo@journal.paoloamoroso.com

This setup is motivated by a limitation of the blog's Fediverse presence and based on a workaround Write.as founder Matt Baer suggested.

The problem is the blog is unable to receive Fediverse mentions or reactions, so Matt suggested to mention a Mastodon handle anywhere in the blog posts. This way the blog posts' toots automatically include the right Mastodon account in replies, in my case @amoroso@fosstodon.org

When replying to a toot, Mastodon highlights the textual handles of any extra mentioned accounts and typing anything deletes them. That's why you need to pay attention, for example by pressing the right arrow key to un-highlight the handle and move the cursor to the right spot to begin typing the reply.

How did I set up Fediverse commenting on Write.as? In the blog settings, under Customize > Post Signature I inserted this code in the signature, i.e. the footer Write.as appends to posts:

<!-- comment -->
[Email](mailto:info@paoloamoroso.com?subject=Reply%20to%20Paolo%20Amoroso%27s%20Journal) | Reply @amoroso@fosstodon.org

The <!-- comment --> shortcode inserts the Remark.as link (I had to insert spaces to escape it, remove them in your signature). The email link has an ordinary mailto URL. And the Fediverse commenting option is just my Mastodon handle.

#blogging

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Over the three years I ran my discontinued Blogger blog I published 146 posts. In just seven months I published 151 posts on this new blog hosted at Write.as, which drives home the superiority of Write.as as a frictionless blogging platform.

#blogging

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