RIP, Google Reader. Google's March 2013 product cancellation summary.

This QuickTip is about Google's March 2013 (spring for them) product retirements, and how they affect Blogger users.

For a while, every time the season changes Google have announced a set of product retirements. This quarter's announcement is just out, and you can find it here.

In short, the changes are:

• Apps Script will stop supporting GUI Builder and five UiApp widgets from September 16, 2013.

• CalDAV API only be available to whitelisted developers, from September 16, 2013. Us Google Calendar's API, instead.

• Google Building Maker will be retired on June 1 2013.

• Google Cloud Connect won't be available from April 30 (use Google Drive's desktop app instead).

• Google Reader stops working on July 1, 2013, Export your subscriptions and use another company's RSS feed-reader. (No recommendations given)

• The Google Voice App for Blackberry won't be supported from next week. (Use Google's HTML5 app with Blackberry version 6 and over instead.)

• The Search API for Shopping, is depricated now and will be turned off on September 16, 2013.

• Snapseed Desktop (Macintosh and Windows) is no longer available for purchase. Existing customers can still download the software and ask for support. (No alternatives recommended, the Snapseed mobile app on iOS and Android is still available free.)

As far as I can see, none of these will have a big impact on people as they use Blogger to maintain their blogs.

But personally I will miss Google-reader: I use it to keep up with the many blogger-helpers that I read, in order to stay on top of what's happening with Blogger overall and to spot areas that need more investigation.

And it worries me that Google are no longer offering a human-useable RSS-feed-reader (ref What is RSS and why does it matter for bloggers?).   Does it make it more-likely that Google will shut down Feedburner in the future? That would hurt a lot of Blogger-users.

Wanted: a Google-reader replacement

Many bloggers, including me, will be looking for a replacement feed-reader.

Recommendations welcome, please leave a comment below!

Google product cancellations for December 2012

This quick-tip is about Google's winter 2012 product cancellations, which
appear to have less impact on most Blogger users than their recent seasonal purges.

Today, Google have announced their next round of discontinued products - they used to call it "spring cleaning", but this time around have at least acknowledged that it's winter for half the world, and summer for the other half!

Some Google Calendar features are to be discontinued, specifically:

• Creating new reservable times on a Calendar using Appointments Smart Rescheduler
• Add gadget by URL.
• Check your calendar via SMS/text message
• Create event via SMS/text message (GVENT).

My guess is that this may affect some Blogger users, who have integrated a calendar with a blog. It's a fairly specialist area, so likely to be a small number.

There are a few other discontinued features, but I suspect they won't affect bloggers to much extent:

• Google Sync a tool giving access to Google Mail, Calendar and Contacts via Microsoft Exchange's ActiveSync protocol - discontinued, except for Google Apps for Business, Government and Education.
• Google Calendar Sync
• Google Sync for Nokia S60
• SyncML, a contacts sync service used by some older mobile devices.

• Issue Tracker Data API: a tool that lets client applications view and update issues on Project Hosting on Google Code via API feeds.

• Punchd an app that keeps loyalty cards on smartphones