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August 10, 2006

Google RSS Reader is not ready for prime time

My buddy Rob was telling me yesterday about how much he likes Google Reader. I had taken a look at a while ago, and pretty much wrote it off. But, Rob is generally spot on when it comes to these types of things, so I decided to give it another look.

After, using it for a little while over the last 2 days, I can tell you, I don't think it is ready. Yes, Rob correctly stated that it is still part of Google Labs, and so it is not an official release yet, and yes the keyboard support in a web app is cool also, but frankly I think it stinks.

I read my blogs this way:

I subscribe to blogs a, b and c - each one about totally different things. When I am ready to troll through the hundreds of entries that are clogging my rss reader I like to do it by category. For instance, if I want to read about the latest automotive news I will look through Autoblog or BBC Formula 1 news. I use Newsgator and in one second I can quickly see how many unread items I have in a particluar blog - can't do that in Google Reader. Google Reader lets me tag my supscriptions (more work) but still does not let me know how many unread entries I have.

I also like to keep some blog entries for future reference - can't do that in Google Reader.

In its current state Google Reader seems to not understand when I have entered a new subscription. Rob suggested reading the Creating Passionate Users blog. In under 1 minute I had subscribed in Newsgator. Not so in Google Reader. I subscribed, nothing appeared, I re-subscribed nothing appeared, tried a third time and got a message telling me I was already subscribed, yet no postings, and nothing in my subscription list would indicate that this is true.

Finally, why does Google Reader insist on keeping all the unread blog entries I have for subscriptions that I deleted? I have dozens of unread entries that I now have to process.

So in summary, having a web based news reader that is accessible any where is a cool idea, but until it can easily manage my subscriptions, and let me read entries the way I like to with minimal effort, I will not be using it.

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Posted by pmadsen at August 10, 2006 12:58 PM

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Google RSS Reader is not ready for prime time:

» Google Rss Reader is very cool from Rob Herbst
I have recently switched my RSS aggregator to Google Reader. This app is still officially in the Google Labs environment, so once in a while there will be a slight hiccup. But, overall I have found this to be a great rss reader. It has full keyboard su... [Read More]

Tracked on August 11, 2006 11:00 PM