31 May 2008
Google Reader
Posted by Sam under: New Obsessions .
Google Reader isn’t really that new of an obsession for me, but I don’t recall writing anything about it. And since I am such a big fan, I figured I should at least mention it.
I was pretty late to the game with RSS and RSS Readers. I knew what they were and how they were supposed to work, but I tried one several years ago and it was clunky, so I never really tried it again. Several months ago while I was messing around with the BlackBerry, I downloaded Google’s Mobile Pack. Google Reader was part of the update. I logged in just to check it out. The rest is pretty much history.
At work I am expected to know pretty much every Internet fad. It is kinda hard to keep up with everything and get other real things done. I got to where my morning blog/news regiment took about an hour. With Google Reader, I was able to read the same sites and cut the routine down to about 15 minutes. I’ve since added a ton of new feeds so it still takes longer, but I am able to skim things much more quickly.
The best thing about Google Reader is the share feature. Once you add friends through gmail’s chat function, you can share articles with your friends just by clicking on a single button. It is really quite amazing. In the past couple of weeks, they’ve added a “share with notes” feature that allows you to comment on why you are sharing a particular article. Google Reader can even create a RSS feed frommy shared items. This is what I use to power the “What I Am Reading Online” section on the right.
