Having tried NewsBlur I thought the web UI was perfect for my style of RSS reading and it was fast enough for my needs. The Android app is the icing on the cake.
I paid 36 bucks, the extra, to support a product that I use every single day for more than 10 hours a day, a product I enjoy using and would contribute if I had the knowledge or time.
Thank you very much Samuel, you are doing a very fine job and I am more than happy in helping the only way I can/know right now.
NOTE: I am not affiliated to NewsBlur or Samuel Clay in any way. Just a very happy customer here.
It's definitely not perfect, but it gets better every day. Performance has notably improved over the last month or so. Kudos to Samuel for a great product. Hopefully someday I'll be able to contribute a bugfix or something to help.
About the new Android app, has it been pushed to Google Play yet? It still shows the app was last updated on the 10th.
Little by little sure does add up. I've been working on the redesign for iOS, android, and both the web app and blurblogs (blurblog example: http://samuel.newsblur.com) for months now. But by committing every day it builds up. That's been the past four years now.
My favorite part of this whole business is the free insurance policy. If I were to get hit by a bus (or god forbid, decide to stop supporting NewsBlur), you or somebody with the necessary resources could have a copy up and running by taking advantage of NewsBlur's open-source repo: http://github.com/samuelclay