What is Google Reader?

Google Reader is an online feed reader tool which allows you to subscribe to feeds (RSS/Atom)  provided by various blogs/websites. These feeds represent the latest content on the blog/site.  Instead of visiting all the Websites/blogs, you can read all the latest content from one place!

In praise of Google Reader

Google calls Google Reader as the inbox for the Web. I think that is an apt description of Google’s feed reader.

I have been using Google Reader for a month or so now. I find it very user friendly and responsive. Earlier I was using Feed Reader, which was a desktop based RSS/Atom feed aggregator.

There are couple reasons why I switched from a desktop based aggregator to online aggregator.

1. I use a couple of computers. I have one at home, another at office and sometimes I carry around a laptop. So synchronizing feeds across all these became a chore.

2. When you have a huge number of feeds subscribed, any desktop based aggregator will affect your bandwidth. I have a 256kbps link at home and it crawls when I start FeedReader.

3. I am always on the net.  I have three broadband connections and there is never a time I am not connected. So the advantage of offline reading with desktop aggregators doesn’t mean much!

4. The best thing with online aggregators is that you can read your feeds from anywhere!

Following screenshot shows how my feeds appear on Google Reader. The left side shows all the feed sources organized neatly in folders and the right side shows the feeds in the selected site.

Cool features of Google Reader

Here are some cool features of Google Reader.

1. There are two kinds of views for the feed inbox. In the expanded view, merely scrolling down makes feeds as read. This is very neat feature when you have thousands of feeds! You can just scroll down and “star” the ones which you find interesting. Later, you can read those “starred” ones and then remove star!

2. You can share interesting feeds on a single click. The “Hot Links” you see on the right side of this page are actually my shared feeds from Google Reader. This can be customized as well (Currently mine is set to 5 items).

3. Google Reader interface is fast. It uses on demand loading and hence is fast even when you have a large number of feeds.

So in summary, if you are looking for a good online feed reader check out Google Reader. It is still in “labs” stage and daily I could see improvements on it. For example, the refresh link at the bottom was recently changed to a refresh button on top left.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Opinion, Tips. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.