5 Favorite News Readers: 4 - Google Reader
Google Reader is definitely easy to use, just like Gmail, which is another Google product I use a lot (yes, as well as that search one).
And while I know that with each of Gmail and Google Reader, there is a very rational system used for organising and displaying the information, I don’t find it as congenial as I would like, in either application.
I use Gmail largely because it is very good at filtering spam, but I don’t have a similarly compelling reason to put up with what are, for me, limitations in the Google Reader interface.
Not to be carping about what is in fact an excellent product, some of the things I like are:
- searching for and installing feeds just on the basis of a blog title or even keywords, without having the full rss feed, is very easy - if there are several that seem similar they are listed and it’s a straightforward process to choose the one you are looking for and if there is just one it is installed immediately
- I can go into “Manage Subscriptions” (not very obvious link at the bottom of the list of subscriptions in the left sidebar) and organise the feeds into folders
- clearing items as read is easy
- the layout is very clean
- it’s free
On the “things I don’t like” side:
- because the basic display shows the whole post in the viewing pane at right, it takes much longer to scan the feeds than in, say, NewsGator Online or BlogBridge
- organising a set of posts today into a folder took me about twenty times longer than would have been the case with NewsGator Online or BlogBridge
So while Google Reader is easy to use and very efficient in finding feeds, it’s a bit of a stretch for me to include it as one of my favorites. It gets into this list because I know it is the favorite of a number of intelligent, web-savvy people.
Maybe if I used it more I would figure out more of what the attraction is.
In the meantime, I’m only too happy to recommend it to people new to the blog world and to feeds. It’s easy to set up and there is an excellent step-through guide on the site, under Help.
Tags: feed-readers, feeds, Google-Reader, RSS, SyndicationRelated Stories
POSTED IN: General, RSS, Search, Syndication
3 opinions for 5 Favorite News Readers: 4 - Google Reader
Pito Salas
Jul 4, 2007 at 7:22 am
Hey Des, thanks for the excellent post! I am glad you are satisfied with BlogBridge and as you know we are constantly making it better.
I was wondering if you could use a more up to date screen shot of BlogBridge. (I am not surprised if the shot you are using came from our own site, because it’s an unending task to keep the site updated.) If you need one, here it is, from today’s weekly development build: http://www.blogbridge.com/images/bb58screenshot.png
Also I happened to notice that at least one of your “BlogBridge” links actually pointed to FeedDemon. Not that we don’t love and admire those guys, but…
Thanks again!
Des Walsh
Jul 4, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Pito
Thanks for the comment. Apologies for the incorrect link - now fixed. The screenshot I used is from the Visual Tour section on the BlogBridge site. I’ve updated the relevant post to include also the screenshot you have linked to in your comment here.
Meg
Jul 6, 2007 at 12:37 am
Hi Des
Google was the first and only reader that I’ve ever really had anything to do with - so I can’t offer much by way of comparison.
I don’t know if this helps you or not, but there’s a tab (top right corner) that allows you to do a “list view” - while it’s not an excerpt, it does allow you to quickly peruse the titles and say, ignore all the ones about the iPhone!
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