I’m now officially a Google Reader convert

April 16, 2007

OK, so it’s taken a lot longer than a whole pile of other people, but it’s official, I’m now a Google Reader convert.

There is of course one thing I’d like: full screen text, but aside from that I can’t quite tell you why I’m not going back to Bloglines, but I’m not… but I’ll try.

1. The Ajax works better: the updates on feeds seems to be better in Reader as opposed to Bloglines. I say seems because I haven’t timed it, but certainly it’s not a X minute proposition as with Bloglines, but as I use it thing with Reader, certainly I seem to be reading things more quickly.

2. Dropping read categories/ tags: I like that Google Reader drops the categories I’ve read from the sidebar, Bloglines doesn’t.

3. Refresh problems don’t exist: Bloglines still has a problem, particularly with Feedburner feeds that sees read stories being shown over..and over..and over…and over again, I presume due to the comments under text portion of a Feedburner feed. This isn’t the case in Google Reader. Once I’ve read a feed its read, full stop.

There are probably other reasons that I haven’t thought of. My thanks though to the Bloglines team, I’ve used your service for many years and its done me well, its just time for a change.

In Web 2.0
permalink

One response to I’m now officially a Google Reader convert

  1. Martin Neumann April 17, 2007 at 5:42 am

    I’m also a fully-fledged converter to Google Reader these last few months – and that surprised me cause I was quite (very) skeptical at first.

    But I know I’m only tapping into a small percentage of its uses.

    Some itmes I’d like improved (and who knows, maybe they’re available, I’m just too dumbass for not looking/knowing):

    – I’d like the starred directory to list how many “stars” I have
    – The “mark as all read” and “refresh” button in the Starred directory are too close – was to easy to delete all the posts I’ve been saving for later reading.
    – the left sidebar looks a bit clunky for my liking – wouldn’t mind some ajaxy magic to be able to resize it.

    I know there’s so much more power within GReader, just gotta find the time to sit down and master it.

    I’m sure some smart blogger has wriitten an awesome tutorial on gReader out there …