Google Reader bound..
I have been using Office Outlook 2007 to read RSS feeds for the past 6 months or so – perhaps even more but after Robert Scoble time and time again has said that Google Reader rocks I decided to give it a try.
So for the past week or so I have been using Google Reader rather than Outlook and I am now going to make the move permanent. For the amount of feeds I currently read, Outlook is just not cutting it.
Google Reader is really fast and the feeds render nicely. The interface is typical Google – clean, crisp and simple to use.
When reading entries I normally try process them all but there are frequently entries which I would like to read but that are too verbose to get through at that time. In this scenario I would find myself launching a Firefox of the blog entry window just so that I could read it later. I don’t need to do this anymore as reader has the ability to ‘’star’ or flag and item and has a neat filtering mechanism were I can go back and view all of the entries that I have starred.
I believe that Outlook has a similar capability but I have never liked the way they flag stuff. In this case I do not want my feeds flagged in with the email I have flagged.
The reason why I looked back at reader in the first place (after discounting it when it came out) was that it now supports Google Gears. This means that with the click of a button I can take all of the feeds offline and read them on a plane. I spend a bunch of my time on planes and this out of all of the needs is my highest priority and why in the past I have selected Outlook over Google Reader.
Given that I am on planes often and unless the stars align and I am not upgraded to those nice seats, reader has one more trick up it’s sleeve. Keyboard shortcuts. You can navigate and read all of the feeds and entries by solely using the keyboard and it is so quick and easy to use that it is the only way that I interact with reader even when sitting at my desk.
Thanks Google for developing 2 pieces of technology (Reader and Gears) that make my life easier!
