I’m trying to switch from the simple and gorgeously dumb Brief to an online but not Google related Reader. I’ve pretty much tried it all and Newsblur looks the best by far. I see a few issues but most are things I can get used to, or can wait for. However. I hate my feeds being automatically marked as read. Absolutely loathe it. The best part about Brief for me was the fact that I could completely remove the “automatically mark as read” option. The second best was the ability to delete stories. In case you’re interested in a different approach to reading feeds, the process for me worked like this: I’d skim through a story, decide whether or not I wanted to read it at that moment. If read, I’d delete it. If not I would leave it as unread. If I wanted a more thorough reading later, I’d mark it unread and leave it waiting. There’s something insanely satisfying in having an empty feed when you know you’ve actually went through them on your own.
Now I realise, Newsblur has a completely different functionality and represents a different way of approaching feeds. But marking feeds as read after 1 second is totally impractical for when one just wants to skim through the feeds to see what’s happening, BEFORE reading. Are you considering implementing an option for at least delayed marking? (The 2-4 weeks mark you were discussing at another thread I understand and find much less annoying then the instant marking.)
I’d gladly become a paid customer if I could choose my stories not to be marked as read automatically at all.
