Google Reader - Review

Hi Kids, it's time to talk about Google. But first let me preface this by saying, because of the short time difference between this post, and my last post, you might not have noticed my last new post. If you haven't read it, do so now because it's about a very important issue. It's called "The Evil RIAA says F..." Well you probably see it now. Go ahead and read it, I'll wait.

Done already? Ok well now for my google review. Today it's all about Google Reader (which you can get to by clicking the link below). Google Reader is an RSS feed aggregater. I know the are a lot of people out there who still don't know what RSS is, so let me explain. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". RSS Feeds can contain any type of information and, in a way, are laid out like a web page, however you won't be able to view them in your standard web browser (which should be firefox if it isn't already). Almost every blog and web site out there has an RSS Feed for it's site because it's become so popular. I've got an rss feed for my blog even (if you look at the links on the right it's labeled as "Atom Feed"). When you plug an RSS feed into an RSS Reader, you get a list of stories you can click through (quickly) and see the stories for each of them. What makes them cool is that they are updated automatically. With a good RSS aggregater, you can add the feeds from all your favorite blog and news sites, and have one place to go for all your information, as opposed to checking each site everyday. It's also important to note that all podcasts are simply RSS feeds that link to mp3 or video files (yes even the iTunes ones).

So now that you know what an RSS feed and an RSS aggregater is, how does Google Reader stack up? Well in my opinion, pretty well. First of all, I have always been looking for a decent web based RSS Feed reader. This way I can log in from any computer in the world, and see the news and opinions that I want to see without having to bounce around a hundred different web sites. With google it's nice because I don't need to invent a new login and password too. But I want to make this a fairly full review so I'm going to go over ever aspect I can think of.

Getting started:
Starting google reader is pretty easy. If you already have a gmail account, you just log in with that, if not you can either use your cell phone's SMS feature to sign up, or get a friend to invite you. It's a pretty slick e-mail service that I have been endorsing heavily for some time. But you don't have to use it if you don't want to. Once you're logged in, you'll see a fairly empty screen. This is because you're not subscribed to any feeds yet, so that's your next step.
NOTE: When I first tried using Google Reader it was painfully slow to do anything, but I believe that they have worked that out as I have not had any problems since that first day.

Adding Feeds:
Google makes it pretty easy for RSS n00bs to find and add feeds to Google Reader. Just type in what your looking for in the search box and search. When you find the feed you want just click on subscribe and your done. But Google doesn't know about every RSS feed out there, so you can also type in the address of a feed into the search box (my feed is http://boredombeyondboredom.blogspot.com/atom.xml). When you do this, google will find it and allow you to preview the feed before you subscribe. (Actually google will force you to preview it first, which I found a little annoying but not detrimental). Anyway, once you have added a feed, you can go back to "your reading list" or search for more.
NOTE: I have noticed that when I add a new feed on Google Reader, only the top item will actually show up in your reading list at first. This worried me but if you give it some time, new items will appear on your reading list as they appear in the feed.

Reading Feeds:
I've heard a lot of people complain that Google Reader is flawed because it doesn't separate the feeds and instead gives you one long list of all the news items from all your feeds. Well I actually like it that way. In that format I wind up looking through all the headlines instead of just the ones I check religiously. But the previous statement is also untrue. You can view one feed at a time if you click on the "edit subscriptions" link that is above the feeds. You are then presented with a list of your feeds, and if you click on one, your news list below will only show items from that feed.

Neat Stuff:
Google Reader is a really simple feed reader but it does have a couple of really nice features that make the whole experience more pleasant. First of all, the page scales depending on your screen resolution, and the size of your browser window. You can see this effect by resizing your browser while GReader is open. The feed list slides up and down, and the item display will never be too wide. This is really helpful when you don't want to do a lot of scrolling. Nice thing number 2) the news list scrolls using the wheel of a mouse. I'm one of those people that constantly uses their mouse's wheel. I don't use any mice that don't have them because it makes scrolling through pages so much easier. So I was very excited when I discovered that my super long news list could be scrolled using the wheel, even though there were no scroll bars. Very nice indeed. Nice thing number 3) Google remembers what items you've read and what you haven't. Much like standard e-mail, each feed item is marked as either read or unread in Google Reader (unread items are in bold). So you can read 20 items on one machine, and not waste time reading the same ones on another machine.

Overall I think Google Reader is a pretty cool and extremely useful tool. After all I'm still using it. And since I don't get paid by anybody, why would I lie, or even bother with this review if I didn't think it was worth wile? Google's been getting a lot of bad press lately but even though not everything they release is gold, it's good to know that they're still pushing stuff out there to see what works and what doesn't.
Keep it up!