Google Reader; RSS At It's Finest
October 19, 2006
I've floundered around this great web for quite some time, and have a large wealth of sites that I visit regularly. For the last year or so I've been playing around with lots of different RSS clients and came to one earth shattering conclusion I hated them. I've hated them on two levels; looks and functionality.
I'm an aesthetic person, I'm sure you already knew that. I like things to look neat, clean and attractive - or I don't really care to view the information presented. It's pretty simple. All of the RSS readers that I had tried either had terrible design or made the articles look completely wrong.
The second point, functionality is something that's a specific flaw in my usage patterns. Most people use one computer all the time. Me? I used somewhere around five or six in the course of a day. Keeping that many computers' RSS feed lists synced was a pain in the ass -and I always ended up missing out on some great news.
Here's where Google Reader comes in. First off, it's a great looking program. Now, it's not all fancy looking with lots of blinking widgets - it's simple, clean and attractive. It's everything that I like. Where it really shines though is the functionality. The main interface is surprisingly slick - displaying a listing of all of the new articles posted since your last read. As you scroll down and mouse over each of them - they're marked as read. Cool! My favorite feature though, is ability to only list updated feeds. So, if you've got a list with 20 or so infrequently updated feeds - you're not inundated with all of them unless they've actually been updated.
If you combine Google Reader with the Google Reader Subscribe Button recently linked to on LifeHacker - you'll be in heaven as you browse the web and have one click feed additions.
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| Tagged: WebApplications, RSS, Google
