chrispoole.com

Phew, long time no blog. Well, this (very) short blog item has come about because Google has recently relaunched its feed reader service.

Up to now I’ve been using bloglines. I don’t like the idea of depending on a stand-alone app, because I like to be able to think that I can check my feeds from anywhere I want. But once I get a Macbook Pro (hurry up, Santa Rosa), I may well check out NetNewsWire anyway, because I’ve heard good things about it.

But for now, I’m always on the hunt of a good web-based feed reader. I’ve tried many, and bloglines is very simple but pretty much does the job. Google’s old reader was terrible. It just didn’t feel usable at all (I would say that it wasn’t intuitive, but intuition doesn’t really exist). Since I use Reddit a lot, I tried their reader that Aaron was working on. It was ok, but again it just didn’t feel right. I’ve also tried many others that I won’t go into (I’ve forgotten what they’re called).

So, why change from Bloglines then? Firstly, the interface does the job, but it’s very basic. No nice little touches like with other readers. Secondly, it’s slow. Not only does the page itself sometimes take a bit longer to load than I’d like, but also I often don’t see a new item appear until several hours after it was initially created by the feed owner. Thirdly, I’ve seen the Bloglines Plumber all too often. This final complaint isn’t really a conplaint; more of an observation. My life doesn’t depend on being able to read feeds, so it hasn’t really affected me. But it’s still annoying. This is the information age, and we’re rapidly changing into a society that wants that information _right now_.

Enter the new Google Reader. It’s very fast, it has a nice interface, and it actually works in the same way that I read feed items. It flows around how I read. It has a lot of the nice touches that Gmail is liked for, together with other nice goodies. It updates feeds almost instantly. It marks items read as I get to actually reading them. I’m still properly evaluating it, but so far it seems to be a good upgrade to their old reader, and a big improvement on bloglines. Check it out!