NewsBlur hands down is the best Google Reader replacement. A free account limits you to 12 feeds, but you can use Yahoo! Pipes to combine several feeds into one, however since it’s going to Yahoo Pipes first, it will delay those stories a bit. The free account also updates less often, but the service is very good. Paid accounts (pricing is cheap at $2 a month) give you access to unlimited feeds and updates more often.
I’ll be spending hours on this site now instead of Google Reader. It was a stupid mistake for Google to kill it, much like when they shutdown Google Notebook. Evernote, owes a lot of their success to Google shutting down Google Notebook, so whoever fills in this niche will benefit.
I’ve since switched to another alternative, so NewsBlur is no longer the best in my opinion.