LifeHacker step by step guide to get going with your own hosted Tiny Tiny RSS

LifeHacker - How to Build Your Own Syncing RSS Reader with Tiny Tiny RSS and Kick Google Reader to the Curb

Yes, Google Reader is going away, and yes, there are great alternatives. However, if you're tired of web services shutting down on you, why not take matters into your own hands? Tiny Tiny RSS is a free, open-source syncing RSS platform with more features than Google Reader ever had, and it can't get shut down. Here's how to install it and set it up.

What You'll Get

Setting up Tiny Tiny RSS requires a little patience, but it's deceptively easy. I had my instance set up and web-accessible within a few hours, and I spent a few more tweaking all of the settings and options just the way I wanted them. At the end of the day you'll have a web page that you can visit at any time, on any device, to read all of the latest articles from the blogs you subscribe to. Tiny Tiny RSS supports filters and labels, so you can organize those feeds into categories, filter out the stories you don't want, and organize them so you read the interesting things first. You can also score feeds, so the blogs you like the most float to the top. There are more features than we have time to get into, but you can read more about them here.

Tiny Tiny RSS also has an Android app (sorry, no iOS app), a mobile-friendly web interface, a Chrome extension, and more third-party supported apps. There's even an XBMC client if you want to read your feeds on the big screen.

There are some things you won't get with Tiny Tiny RSS that Google Reader offers, though. For example, you won't get such a broad array of third party apps and clients. Sadly, Tiny Tiny RSS can't be used with your favorite desktop or mobile feed reader like Reeder or NewsRob. Plus, it's definitely harder to set up than just importing all of your feeds to Feedly. Even so, if you want ultimate control over your news reading, and you want something that'll never shut down on you, Tiny Tiny RSS Is worth setting up.

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While Tiny Tiny RSS uses a bunch of tech that I'm not comfortable with (and that might be a good thing?), I dig the idea of it. Spin up your own web/cloud based feed sync and no longer let your feeds be held hostage or shutdown at the mercy of others (cough... Google... cough).

Am I going to actually execute and do this? Doubt it. Would I spin up a VM that was already setup and configured? I'd seriously think about it. Amazon, Microsoft, it would be pretty cool if along with all the other VM images you had in your catalogs, you had VM's with this (and others like NewsBlur).