Google Reader

Google Reader has evolved into a powerful newsreader. Despite a plethora of competitors GReader stands out based on functionality and price (FREE). Newsgator recently opened their product up for free to consumers as well. Many consumer love the newsgator line but the stand-out difference is that GReader is a full online application (of course) whereas Newsgator is a standalone installable app.

Google Reader is easy to use. Browse to Google's Reader website and login with your gmail account.

The easiest way to get started is to import an existing feed or collection of rss feeds. GReader can import any opml file under settings - import. In my case I had used a netvibes.com page for quite some time. Helpfully over at netvibes they allow adding pre-defined collections of feeds (tabs in their lingo) to your page which others have submitted. This is very easy to do and convenient. Since I already had 7 or 8 tabs added I exported those into an opml file - then imported directly into GReader.

Tabs from netvibes are imported as tags in GReader. Google continues the trend of using folders and tags interchangeably. Feeds can be subscribed to multiple tags. The interface is a snap to use - Folder list with feeds on the left, content pane on the right.

'Add Subscription' allow the user to type any blog/website name or the actual rss link. Feed will be added right away with no tag.

Click on any feed and 'feed settings' option allows for applying tags, subscribing and unsubscribing. As you scroll down the content pane of any feed GReader automatically marks that article as read. Unread articles show up in bold in the feed pane. Users can choose 'mark all read' in any feed to update all.

Anything with an RSS feed can be added to GReader. This can be deceivingly powerful and doesn't just limit you to blogs. I've setup ebay listings, craiglist search results and even job searches to show up in my Reader based on the RSS feed available on each.

One of the most powerful (and untouted) features of Google Reader is that it saves the data for you. This means that you can add a whole slew of feeds, organize them at will - and then use the ever-available search to sift thru all of the data without needing to hit the live site(s).

This can be a great research tool - as well as an organization one. Since I've switched to GReader the time savings has been immense. Instead of flipping thru bookmarks, news sites and blogs I scan quickly thru the updated sites and can focus my time on the content that I truly need or am interested in. If I happen to miss something or don't have time to catch up, it will be right there for me when I'm ready.

I've found that I don't need to bookmark nearly as many sites as previously - they now wait for me in Reader.

Another of my favorite features - Google Reader Mobile. That's correct - I can pull up google.com/reader on my phone and flip thru all of the same content. This makes my cumbersome phone browser suddenly useful. Instead of fighting to type in URLS and sites that do not fit on the mobile browser, the content is served up easily and organized just as I like.

Adding a bit of social flair Google allows for all feeds and links to be shared publicly or with friends via 'your shared items'. I am sure Google will try to increase this functionality over time as it would position competitively with many other social bookmarking sites. Trends are also viewable and available (of course - this is Google) where you can see which feeds you spend time on, what you read, etc.

All in all a terrific application. And for the price - how could you beat it. Google scores another win for usefulness and assuming they continue to upgrade and improve they've got a sure winner