You can subscribe to Google Groups w/o a google account; it's just a bit more troublesome. (You can't use them on the website, but they work fine as a mailing list.)

I'm gonna miss the Reader. But I use my gmail daily, and there is no other comparable service.

Um. Any suggestions on RSS feed thingies? I don't want to port my reader subscriptions into DW feeds; one of the things I love about Reader is how it lets me sort by folders/categories.