Google announced a major update to the Google Reader at the end of last week. I think by now everyone knows about it. I am a little late in jumping on the discussion but this wouldn’t keep me from writing about my opinion, would it?
When I heard the announcement, I was preparing to write about my changing feed reading habits. The change was towards “not reading feeds” but following meme trackers and directly going to my favorite blogs. The main reason for this was that the information overload that comes with ever growing number of feeds, and not being able to find a satisfactory online feed reader after Yahoo bought (or mysteriously swallowed) SearchFox.
So, in this mind setting, Google Reader update was very exciting for me. I couldn’t really get used to the first version but this one really satisfies me since it is fast enough and nice looking. I especially like the List View which shows the titles and enables expansion of items with a click. This was one of the interface features of SearchFox that I liked. By the way, I have a feeling we will see this in Gmail as well. I don’t see any reason why this ajaxy expansion would not be put in Gmail. I think something like this is much needed.
Another feature that I liked is the individual treatment of the posts in the Expanded View and how it is possible to scroll down to mark items as read. This is very similar to how Onfolio’s RSS reader (shown below) handled individual posts (no auto mark as read as scroll).
There are also some things that I think are a bit on the weak side. I think it was easier to tag/label feeds in the older version. I can edit tags for posts but not the feed itself and adding multiple tags to a feed makes it appear in multiple folders. Also adding a label to a feed puts it in a folder but may be I don’t want that. Another issue is the refreshing of feeds. There is no setting as to how frequently the feeds should be updated. I am sure the reader tries not to put a lot of load on servers and does not allow too frequent updates, but it would be nice to have at least an update/refresh button (I know I can use the browser’s refresh button) to force an update. At the moment, I can’t tell when my feeds are last updated and can’t be sure if I am getting the most recent posts.
All in all, I like the new Google Reader. I think what Google did with this update was what Bloglines could/should do at least a year ago. Granted, they have updated their sidebar after the Google Reader update, but it looked like a reflex move to me. If they were able to push an update that quickly, why did they keep feeding the same thing all this time? I will be going back to reading feeds and seeing if the new Google Reader makes any change in my feed reading habits.
[tags]technology, google, google reader, bloglines, onfolio [/tags]
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