It has been a while since I landed on Digg but I tried quite a few web based apps including Feedly, The Old Reader and several more that have already shut down. I also tried a few native tools like Safari's built in reader and Reeder on MacOS.
At the end of the day, nothing has been as good as Google Reader... at least not for the way I want to use it.
I feel your pain on loosing Google Reader. I have tried dozens of replacements and finally landed at https://digg.com/reader if you can believe that... Also, I am sure you have seen them but just incase you haven't - https://theoldreader.com/home was super similar to Google Reader.
Alas neither of these are the same but perhaps they will be "good enough".
I know this is a bit off topic and a touch on the personal side(feel free to not answer) but I am curious how you taught yourself to read body language? Did you use books or trial and error, or??
The first step was learning to make eye contact. If you're not looking at people, you're not even getting the chance to read them. I just didn't look much at people for the first 21-22 years of my life.
I remember reading a bunch of articles about "how to make eye contact". I was on sites aimed at people with aspergers, as they're a niche most likely to actually need that kind of advice.
Then you practice. And occasionally get feedback from people. Everything will be awkward as first, but do something long enough and it becomes a habit. The feedback is important, so your new habit is actually a good one.
Then I read some books on body language, and I got this DVD by Paul Ekman about microexpressions. I've since read some stuff suggesting that may be bunk, but the DVD was still valuable because it showed me what a bunch of different expressions represented, and gave me feedback if I was correctly classifying them. (There's a big book of facial expression coding that lists expressions standard across cultures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System)
Then I combined the two. Talking to people, looking at them, and noticing their expressions. A bit one was looking for laugh lines by eyes. If someone is genuinely amused, their eyes will smile in a way that they won't if they're just mouthing a smile.
After that, it was just practice. Talk with people, pay attention, see if the results match what you thought. (For instance, if you thought someone enjoyed themselves, and then they want to hang out again, then you were probably right)
Over time, by paying attention, and using feedback to assess my judgments, I was able to build an intuition for reading people, one that I believe is quite accurate. People often are surprised that I know what they're thinking or when they're upset by something.
Most of the small annoyances of life melted away. A lot of interpersonal grief just evaporates if you can read the people you're dealing with, and respond appropriately. For instance, I have zero complaints about store personnel, in person. They're all wonderful! Over the phone, I can't see them, and stuff can still get frustrating.
It turns out that people usually aren't jerks. We just react in predictable ways to other people. So if you do something irritating, or ignore someone's discomfort, they'll get irritable. And then you'll get irritable.
But if you can spot the small signs, you can make adjustments, and everything goes smoothly. (To be clear, I'm talking about smoothing minor friction, not being a doormat. But minor frictions cause 80% of social grief!)
So:
1. Theory
2. Trial and error
3. Feedback
4. Revision, repeat #2
I know this thread is long passed but I wanted to say thank you! I appreciate the depth of your response and I believe it will help others who have similar anxiety.
I have a site that I would consider selling you for $5000. In fact, I just asked HN what they thought I should do with it - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5028846 Sadly, I didn't get any traction so not many people saw it or gave feedback.
It is a complete MVP that I do not have the time or money remaining to market. The code is all there and it is extremely portable. I have an idea or two about how to make a profit with it as well as several features you could add to make it really great.
Thanks for the comment. I initially did a bit of advertising (Adwords as well as paid Stumbles) for the extremely limited amount of money spent they did OK but nothing tremendous. Because it is bootstrapped I am conflicted with how much to invest at this point.
I have been working on basically this same thing but for a wider audience for the last 3 mos. Unfortunately I am a solo act and only have evenings so everything takes 10x longer.
*edit for clarity