If I had to choose two alternatives to Google Reader, I’d pick Feedly or Digg Reader for most people. Moving to either service takes seconds since you sign into these services with your existing Google account credentials, after which they import your existing feeds with little fuss. Neither Feedly or Digg Reader require you to pay a subscription fee, making them good choices for casual readers and those who won’t get the value out of an alternative with pro features.

Google Reader will no longer be active after July 1st, and you’ll have until July 15th to export your existing feeds. I recommend following this guide by Katie Floyd if you want to back up your current subscriptions.

Why Feedly

Feedly is my reader of choice. Feedly has a solid web app that works in all major browsers from Google Chrome to Opera, plus they have great Android and iOS apps, making it one of the few alternatives that’s already available on most devices. It’s integrated with IFTTT, and there’s an open API so you can still use your favorite apps like Reeder. There will be a subscription for people who want more features down the road.

Feedly’s mobile apps are put together like a magazine, but they’re not as deliberate as an app like Flipboard. Folders are eschewed for colorful headers, and the endless feed of articles is replaced by covers and article groupings that can be flicked away like turning a page. It’s an app made for skimming, for picking and choosing, and the result is something that feels fresh and not boring.

You can share articles to Pocket or Instapaper, to Twitter or Facebook or Google+, to Buffer or your device’s clipboard so you can paste a link into a chat app like I sometimes do. There’s a section that only shows you the most popular stuff from your feeds for the day, and then there’s a section for browsing everything all at once. You can search for sites you like and subscribe to them, or browse general categories for things like technology and games to discover something new. There’s lots of swooshing and swiping gestures throughout the app; when browsing articles, swiping left and right advances to the next or previous article, and pulling up closes them so you can continue perusing. If you’re reading in the dark, you can change the theme from white to black.

My favorite feature is the giant button at the end of each section that lets you mark everything as read. It’s super clever.

You can download Feedly for iOS here.

Why Digg Reader

Digg Reader is a new feed reader that closely resembles Google Reader. There’s no Android app right now, but there is an iOS app. You won’t be able to plug Digg Reader into your favorite apps just yet, but an API is planned.

Betaworks, the company behind Digg Reader, has a history of working with products that track things on the web or help you discover the most popular stories. Bit.ly is a company of betaworks, as is recently acquired Instapaper. Betaworks created News.me, an iOS app that highlighted the best articles and videos your friends shared on Twitter. Today, News.me has stuck around as a service that delivers the day’s best stuff to your inbox. Betaworks also revived Digg, turning it into a handcrafted site that presents the web’s top stories.

Digg Reader is a modern take on Google Reader, integrating betaworks’ intimate knowledge of what’s popular from Digg into its core. Thus, the best feature is the popular view, which presents a list of the most popular unread articles from your feeds. The layout is very clean and simple, the reading experience being a prime focus for both the web and mobile apps. Digg Reader is much friendlier to look at and use on a daily basis than other alternatives.

The web app is currently the most robust and is very friendly to those who are accustomed to Google Reader’s keyboard shortcuts. You can share articles to Facebook or Twitter, and choose to save articles to apps like Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability. The things you Digg can also be publicly shared through a user specific URL. Like Feedly, Digg Reader lets you search for sites and discover something new in a variety of categories. The iOS app currently lacks the popular view, but it does have a darker theme for evening reading.

I recommend Digg Reader over Feedly if you read on your computer more often than your tablet or phone.

Digg on iOS has Digg Reader built-in. Download it here.

The Kreyos Meteor is the latest wearable gadget to make its appearance on a crowd-funding platform, this time on Indiegogo. Claiming to be the only smartwatch with both voice and gesture controls, the Kreyos Meteor connects over Bluetooth to your iPhone, Android, or Windows 8 phone. With an iPhone, you can engage Siri through the watch, or use motion-based gestures like a wave of the hand to skip tracks, answer calls, or to have the watch read you a text message without pressing a button. The watch will even help you locate your misplaced phone.

More impressive are the litany of features that are built in for monitoring personal health. The watch could replace devices like the Fitbit or Jawbone UP, tracking overall activity and more with built-in heart rate and cycling monitors. And the Kreyos Meteor isn’t just limited to being a watch - it can be taken out of its watchband to fit into a lanyard or belt clip. It’s also waterproof, making it a great choice for swimmers who want to analyze their performance or for trail runners exposed to the elements.

Targeted at people who want a better way to receive notifications and individuals who are looking for an all in one sensor to track their performance, the Kreyos Meteor wants to keep the phone in your pocket. Just like the Pebble, the Kreyos Meteor will also give developers an opportunity to create new apps and gestures. Already exceeding its goal of $100,000, a contribution of $119 lets you pre-order you the watch in black, expected to ship this November. For an additional $10 you can pick your own color. You can learn more fund the campaign here.

You’re in the shower. You’re at the mall. You’re in the parking lot. The next pop single has just popped in your head and you’ve got to get that idea down fast. But don’t fret. Just Hum it.

Hum, designed, branded, and engineered by a trio of music lovers, is pitched as an all-in-one alternatives to the apps we use daily to capture our song ideas. Instead of singing into Voice Memos or writing lyrics in Notes, Hum brings all your song writing tools into a single application. With Hum, you’ll be able to write lyrics, hum or record a riff, and then set the key. After recording, you can apply a root note and apply metadata for tuning and mood. And when you go to record that demo based on what you’ve written down, Hum will play back your tune with the correct tone, metronome optional.

Hum works however you do — it’s smart and flexible. You can write lyrics and record later, record first and loop a snippet to get down the perfect chorus, or filter your recordings based on a variety of metadata so you can knock out a recording session.

The guys behind Hum are looking to raise $20,000 by July 24th, and they’re currently well on their way with $3,407 raised. Of the pledges, you can get a discounted version of the app for $6 as a reward if the campaign is successfully funded. $10 will nab you the app and a pack of Hum branded picks and stickers, and $30 gets you a t-shirt. You can learn more and back Hum on their Kickstarter page here, and get an overview of the app’s features on their website.

Today, Evernote has announced a few new ways to interact with Skitch, an app that makes it easy to visually communicate ideas with text, shapes, and sketches. The latest set of updates are focused on improving annotations — how easy they are to make and how fast to get to them.

Starting an adjustable canvas, Skitch 2.6 lets you add margins to an image or screenshot. The extra whitespace next to an image will give you some extra room to add instructions or elaborate on an idea. You can simply click the + sign on any edge to add extra space, or let the canvas resize itself as you draw a shape past the image’s edge. You also have the option to resize the canvas yourself with the Crop/Resize tool.

Perhaps my favorite addition to Skitch are the improvements made to shapes. By simply holding the shift key, you can draw perfect circles and squares, while arrows and lines will snap into place at 45 degree angles. This works with handles when rotating and editing drawn shapes as well. And shapes can now be drawn to a much smaller size if you’re looking to annotate something with pinpoint accuracy.

The last set of features makes getting to annotations and returning to them later easier than ever. For taking screenshots, you can now turn off the advanced options panel by unchecking its setting in Skitch’s preferences. Then for saving your images, Skitch will let you save in a new kind of re-editable PNG file. You can embed these images into documents just like you would with any ordinary PNG, but Skitch PNGs can be re-opened and edited for correcting annotations or adding a second opinion.

Sktich 2.6 is available to download from the Mac App Store.

[via Evernote Blog]

Our thanks to Global Delight for sponsoring MacStories this week with Boom.

Boom goes above and beyond the speakers in your MacBook or iMac to deliver impressive sound. Boom boosts the volume of your Mac so you can hear your favorite music, movies, and games over noisy fans or background noise. Boom even boosts the volume of music files in your iTunes playlists so you can listen to tunes on the go at fuller volumes. Plus, Boom offers personalized presets through its built-in equalizer, meaning you’ll always get the best sound no matter what you’re listening to.

Earning Macworld’s Best of Show award in 2011, Boom takes your audio a whole new level. Try Boom today and get $2 off the regular price.

NetNewsWire, one of the first RSS readers originally developed by Brent Simmons and later acquired by Black Pixel in 2011, has made a reappearance before Google Reader shuts down on July 1st.

NetNewsWire 4.0 is the result of nearly two years of work, modernizing an app which was introduced in 2002 and saw its last major update to 3.0 in 2007. Before Black Pixel acquired the popular news reader, a light version of NNW 4.0 was introduced to the Mac App Store, but it was significantly paired down in features compared to the original version.

NNW 4.0 is currently focused on the reading experience, syncing RSS feeds locally to a Mac and otherwise absent of any background syncing services. During the public beta, Black Pixel plans on continuing to build out their background syncing service, and will be revisiting the core design of their iOS apps to bring them up to date the new design language introduced in iOS 7. For those wanting to try NNW, you can import your RSS feeds from Google Reader by logging into the service from the app or through an OPML file.

The latest version of NNW is focused on discovery, sharing, and a distraction free reading experience that consolidates all of your favorite web articles in a single place. In NNW, you’ll be able to subscribe to popular feeds if you’re just starting out and need recommendations, bookmark your favorite articles, mark sites as your favorites, and have multiple articles open at the same time (useful for following an unfolding story).

NNW 4.0 will be available for $20 when it launches, but those who pre-order during the beta period can get it half off. You can download the public beta and read more about the latest changes on Black Pixel’s blog.

[via The Next Web]

On your keyring, in your backpack or travel luggage, or attached to your laptop, Tile keeps track of your valuables so you can easily find them wherever they may go. Tile resembles a small white square that’s only a few millimeters thick, making it both pocketable and small enough to be conveniently attached to gadgets or personal belongings. It’s small enough that you can slip it into a wallet’s pocket, or you can simply adhere it to the surface of a MacBook.

Tile will work over Bluetooth 4.0 with the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPad mini, 3rd or 4th generation iPads, and the 5th generation iPod touch. A Tile app for the iPhone will let you track all of your Tiles within a 50 ft to 150 ft range, displaying a small marker to help you find lost or misplaced items. These Tiles definitely aren’t GPS aware, meaning that you wouldn’t be find misplaced luggage if it was half way around the world (more on this in a bit). But Tile is certainly useful if you forget your jacket or drop your keys in an airport terminal. Tiles can be rung so you can audibly hear where your items are, and like a metal detector, an indicator in the app points you in the right direction of the things you’re trying to find when you’re close by.

Tile is discretely social, which in theory is supposed to overcome its limitations of not being a true GPS tracking device. If a bunch of people are using Tiles and its cloud service, then it’s possible you would be able to recover something was that stolen or dropped outside of the range of your iPhone. When you mark a Tile as lost, other Tile users’ phones will be notified of the lost item, and will begin searching for it in the background. Because everyone’s phone would be inherently connected, that means you should be able to find your lost Tile by proxy through someone else. No personal information or details about what the Tile is attached to are shared - the phone simply and secretly relays back whether it’s found the lost item and where it is to the original owner.

Although a Tile is relatively affordable (roughly $20 per Tile), a downside is that Tile has no replaceable batteries, and it’ll need to be replaced on a yearly basis as it loses its charge.

Tile is currently available through pre-order, having already been successfully funded through Selfstarter, a roll-your-own crowdfunding solution that gives creators more control over the marketing and presentation of their product on their own sites. You’ll earn additional Tiles if you pre-order in bulk, and it’s expected to ship late this year or in early 2014.