So calling Google Reader dead may be a bit premature, but Google’s announcement of their intention to kill their baby all but killed it. On monday it is RIP for the reader. I’ve gone through disbelief to mourning the loss to a search for a replacement that best emulates what Google Reader does.

In the end I decided to not just find something that just replaces it with a new tool providing the same exact feature only with a different name.

If I had to find a different tool, I might as well try to find something better. The fact is that although Google Reader was one of my favorite Google tools, I did not use it. Yes, it is a bit odd that I’m writing a post about replacing a tool I didn’t use. And when I say that I didn’t use it, I use the term “did not” very recklessly. The fact is that I could not read all the blog I follow without it. Google Reader had however turned into an infrastructure piece for me. I used it to collect the posts and keep track of what I had read, but the tool of my choice for reading was the Reeder. Unless you are familiar with it, it may seem like I just referred to the Google Reader again, but it is spelled differently and this is a wonderful tool for reading blogs and it uses the Google Reader to manage the blogs and lets Google Reader track which posts are read and which are not.

If the Reeder is such a wonderful app, why not keep using it. At first I thought of abandoning it as Google Reader was going away. But it turns out the Reeder will continue to work (or so they claim). It supports Feedbin and possibly even feedly in the future. There has not been much talk about it on their own website or even on their twitter account. There are lots of fans asking what is going on, scarcely little from @reederapp themselves.

I started thinking of how I consume text these days. I do still surf on a computer, but it is when looking for something. I prefer reading on my iPad. My workflow has actually changed such that when I find a great article or blog post, I flip it so I later can read it in Flipboard on the iPad. If the article is worth saving for the future after having read it I add it to Evernote. As that is my workflow for things I do not have to read right now, why should my workflow for reading blogs be any different? After all, I read them when time allows.

After that epiphany I took a look at Flipboard wondering if I could get a similar tool for reading blogs on the iPad. It turns out I can, they have ceased the opportunity Google created. You can now read your blogs in the tool we all love. Getting my blogs to Flipboard has made them seem so much more enjoyable. It integrates with Google Reader so it imports all the blogs you have there and lets you follow the same blogs.

The one thing that can be confusing is that after opting to read your blogs in flipboard, you will want to go into the settings for Google Reader in Flipboard and possibly turn on to have number of unread items indicated, to set posts you read in Flipboard to read and to show only unread posts. I have them all set to ON and it works very well with the way I want to read my blogs.

For me reading blogs on the iPad is so much more enjoyable than to try to catch up in the browser on the computer. The latter never happens  and I tend to fall far behind and have to set aside a few hours to catch up, since moving my blog reading to Flipboard I have stayed current on all blogs I read.

If you haven’t found a way to read your blogs yet that you really love, give Flipboard a try. I think you’re gonna love it.