I've switched to Google Reader, for good
Or at least until something better comes along. I’ve obviously been playing around with Google’s web-based aggregator since it launched a couple of years ago, but not until recently (err, not too recent anymore — MarsEdit tells me I started this post in March) was I ‘forced’ to use it for longer than a day or two.
Bloglines, the aggregator I’ve used for three straight years (wow!), has a hard cut-off when it comes to the amount of posts it will keep as unread — 200 — while Google Reader has no such limitation (it probably has some upper limit, but it’s much greater than 200). I was in a situation where I knew I wasn’t going to be able to check my feeds for about a week, and I, of course, didn’t want to risk missing a single one, thus my first ‘serious’ use of Google Reader.2
While I’ve always had love for NetNewsWire, it’s been a non-starter for me these last few years as I find its browser-based syncing partner, NewsGator Online, a bit clunky; I think Bloglines and Google Reader really are the only choices a power user has if he requires browser-based access.3
Why Google Reader is the best
First of all, Google Reader allows multimedia embeds (e.g., YouTube, Google Video, etc.), while Bloglines acts like they don’t exist (i.e., you can’t even tell they’re there half the time, much less play them). While I don’t usually like to watch videos inside the main feed window (I generally prefer to open interesting links in background tabs), it’s nice to have the option, especially when I know the video is short and isn’t something I’m likely going to want to comment on through the linked-list posts. If the idea of multimedia embeds excites you, be sure to check out Julien Carosi’s Google Reader Preview Enhanced, which allows you to view everything within Google Reader (i.e., the actual page being linked to).
I find the tags feature very useful. I use it mostly to flag items I might want to write about later (if, of course, I’m away from MarsEdit at the time; if not, I’ll just go ahead and open and save there). Using the excellent keyboard shortcuts, I simply punch t when I’m on an item of interest, and tag it as a bit, a post, whatever.
Trends is kind of neat, but it could probably be given more utility. That said, I do rather enjoy seeing how many news items I’m reading on a daily/monthly basis. For example, it currently tells me, among other things, that over the last 30 days I’ve read 36,517 items from 312 subscriptions.
While fairly new, and something I’ve yet to actually need, Google Reader can now take advantage of Google Gears, an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality. With the Gears+Reader combination, you can bring the latest 2000 items from your feeds onto your local machine and access them when you’re without connectivity (e.g., when you’re on an airplane).
Jon Hicks hasn’t designed a skin for Bloglines.
And finally, Google Reader’s pièce de résistance — inline e-mail. From the Google Reader blog discussing the launch of the feature:
- send email from within Reader — no more second window for sending email
- send the entire item as it appears in Reader, including formatting and images
- use your Gmail address book (if you have one) to add contacts with auto-complete
I constantly use this time-saving feature. It’s always the case as I’m speeding through posts that I come across articles I know friends of mine would be interested in, and it’s so nice to simply click e-mail and have an inline, auto-completing interface present itself. It’s a wonderful thing. The only downside to this feature is that it can’t easily be replicated by competitors (i.e., Bloglines can’t offer this functionality because it doesn’t talk to my e-mail service, Gmail). I’m stuck.
Problems/issues
Gushing aside, it’s not all roses in Google Reader land, and I’m going to do the rest of this post the same way I did my earlier On using Gmail exclusively write-up (I should note that a fair chunk of the things mentioned in that post have since been fixed by Google), which is to say I’m going to list what’s still ‘wrong’ with the service and how us power users might be sated.
No way to batch-change all of your feeds to sort by oldest post. I prefer to read my news from oldest to newest — as events occurred/posts were published — but Google Reader won’t let you change this except on a per-feed/folder basis.
When using folders, it sorts by date and offers no way to sort by feed (not even alpha). For example, my Apple folder contains quite a few feeds, and if I click on the folder instead of one of its constituent feeds, I’m shown all the unread posts, sorted by date. The problem with this only-sort-by-time approach (at least for some of us) is that it can significantly increase the amount of time it takes me to skim the posts. The reason for this is that I give some sites more intellectual weight than others; if Google Reader sorted a folder’s posts by feed instead of time, I could rifle through a folder much more quickly because I could do super-quick skims of the sites I don’t care too much about or don’t expect to get much from (i.e., the posts from each site would be grouped together).
100+ is meaningless. This probably burns me up more than anything else. How hard is it to say 43423 unread items? Hint: it’s not hard at all.
Can’t search feeds. Huh? This thing has been out for almost two years now and it still won’t let you search through your feeds. I don’t get it. A few kludgy workarounds have been devised (see here and here), but seriously, come on Google.
It fails to refresh a post after there has been some change made to it. For example, let’s assume that I wrote, Google Reader is kinda neat, in a post, and then decided to change it to, Google Reader is kind of neat; if I read the post in my aggregator, before the change, it won’t show me the new language when it eventually slurps up the modified post. This isn’t a glitch, but rather a deliberate decision made by the designers. I can kind of understand their reasoning — presumably to not confuse novices — but it really bugs me. If someone has made a change to a post, and that post hasn’t yet been pushed out of the feed, I’d like to see it.
It still doesn’t support authenticated feeds. There are a few sites I subscribe to that require me to have a login/password. These feeds are utterly inaccessible through Google Reader. This is obviously something they’ll eventually fix, but…
It doesn’t let you look at all the unread posts for a feed (or folder) at once, but instead presents them to you 20 at a time in a kind of show-as-you-go way. Initially, I loathed this feature, but I’ve since come around to it, and now quite like it. While the underlying idea is a good one, namely that posts are only marked as read as you scroll past them (instead of immediately after clicking on a feed/folder), the 20-at-a-time thing is by no means set in stone. I’d like to see all my posts at once (for the feed/folder I’ve clicked on), while still maintaining the mark-as-read-as-you-go functionality. This would be especially useful when I’m on a slow connection.
Can’t unstar all. This is actually something that Bloglines suffers from too. The idea is that when you star a post (or clipping in Bloglines) you are giving yourself a way to find it again. I only use this feature while at work (read: all the time), because I’ll come across something that I know I don’t have time to read (and don’t want to open in yet another tab), but want to make sure I come back to later. Using the starring functionality is a bit easier in Google Reader than Bloglines, because the former has some Ajaxy goodness that really speeds up the process, while the latter requires multiple clicks and a pop-up. That said, neither service lets you mass-unstar the starred items, so when I finally get around to revisiting these saved posts I have to click each of them twice — once to open the post in a tab, and once to unstar it.
No print feature. To be fair, I don’t think any aggregator has such a feature, but I think it would be incredibly useful. Yes, of course you can just use your browser’s built-in print function, but that’s not what I’m talking about here; what I want is a way to print an individual post, in a general, common way, somewhat irrespective of its markup. I think Google Reader should, and definitely could, provide a kind of generic print stylesheet that could be applied to any individual post (much like some thoughtful site maintainers already do). In light of the fact that most sites now publish full-content feeds, you shouldn’t have to go outside of the aggregator to print something (i.e., currently, if you want to print a particular feed, you are probably going to want to open the post on the original site, and then look to see if that site has some sort of print mechanism).
Google Reader’s Achilles heel? Its mobile implementation. Google Reader’s mobile effort has always left a lot to be desired, even when you don’t juxtapose it with Bloglines’. If you are going to force me into viewing my unread items as a disparate river of news, at least allow me to star — from within the list view — those that look interesting. That said, the Google Reader experience on the iPhone is quite nice; I’m still forced to go ahead a page to star something and still can’t look at individual feeds sorted by folder, but it looks good and is responsive. Not to be outdone though, Bloglines’ iPhone interface is fantastic.
In summary
Has Google Reader become the web-based aggregator? In my humble opinion, yes. Bloglines has a lot going for it — it kept me there for years, an incredible feat — and while it isn’t necessarily known for being innovative, it is known for being a joy to use, and I think that’s what ultimately keeps it in the game. But, Google Reader simply provides a better all-around experience, and inline e-mail really puts it in a league all its own.
To be fair, Bloglines stores everything you, or anyone else, subscribes to, and so getting back all of those posts for the week is a trivial thing (i.e., choose Display items within the last week), but not so trivial as to not be an easy excuse for me to have to use Google Reader for a while. 🙂 ↩
If and when Apple releases an ultra-portable (which I probably want more than anyone on the planet), I may go back to NNW; I’d run a copy on the Mac Pro and the notebook (which I’d bring to work), they’d sync up through NewsGator Online, and only rarely would I have to actually use NewsGator Online (i.e., when I’m away from both machines). ↩