Review of Google Reader – Online Feed Reader!
Last year, in October Google made some serious changes in Google Reader and is now one of the most used online feed reader services. Of course, they made some really good changes and that’s why, its gained a good reputation in the over crowded marked of Online Feed readers. Lets see the positives and negatives of this service :
PROS of Google Reader :
1. Easy Navigation : The best feature of Google reader is its navigation and I actually like it so much that I once thought that, how wonderful it will be if Gmail could have same navigation too. Anyway, the good thing about the navigation is that it lets you read the feeds in a big pane scrollable pane. Not only you can choose to select only All Unread Items (which are sortable in various ways) but you can choose to read, already read items and that too for a specific feed.
2. User Interface : Google Reader is two pane feed reader. It has got the list of all the subscribed feeds on the left column and the scrollable (Ajaxified) pane on the right hand side, where one can read the items. It lets users sort the feeds according to the time and lets you select the option, that you want to read All the items or are you only interested in the new unread items. It allows you to Star specific items for later reference (you can call it, bookmarking or saving of specific posts). It lets you share the posts with the world and also allows you to mark all the feeds as read, in case you are just not in a mood of reading too many feeds!
3. Feature Rich : Google reader has got the necessary and the most important features, at least the ones which are most required and most used ones. The ones which are really not necessary are not there and that’s one more thing I like about it. It lets you export and import the subscription list. It can easily import OPML files but it exports in XML format (Not much difference). It allows you to group similar feeds in folder or tags. Automatic marking of feed items as read as you go through the list of items. Automatic Updates of the feeds and auto discovery of feeds is also there and makes life a bit easier. Shortcuts make the navigation of Google reader, quite easy and believe me, without shortcuts, it would have been hard to imagine Google reader.
4. Supports ATOM & RSS : Like most of the online services, it supports both types of Feeds i.e. RSS and ATOM.
5. Reading Trends : It shows you, your reading habits and the trend about which is the most updated feed and the ones which have not been updated from ages and accordingly lets you decide that which feeds you want to keep in your precious list of Feeds.
CONS of Google Reader :
1. No search engine : Can you imagine, a service of Google and still doesn’t have a search engine in it! But, alas that’s the case. Google reader, misses a search engine and that is one of the biggest drawback of Google reader.
To be honest, I feel that there is just one major drawback of Google Reader, It needs some cosmetic changes (according to few bloggers and small personalized changes. But, no real drawback apart from the Search feature.
Overall rating & views :
Google Reader is one of the best online feed readers. It just needs a search facility and it will be one complete suit (Although, there is a work around for the search feature and I’ll discuss it in the upcoming posts too) . It’s major factors are its interface and ease of navigation, both with the help of mouse and keyboard. That’s why it quickly became the choice of feed reader for most of us. I personally use Google reader and I’m all the way in love with this service.
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Naveen
April 25th, 2007 at 10:59 am #
I completely agree. I use Google Reader for the past six or seven months and I really luv it.
As u said, it misses the search engine badly. Could u plz let me know is there any other feed readers that is similar to GR?
reviewsaurus
April 25th, 2007 at 3:44 pm #
Hello Naveen!
I’m going to write the reviews of various online feed readers and desktop based feed readers. It will be a series of posts and I’ll request you to subscribe to the feeds, for constant updates on feed readers and other tips and tricks :)
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