Google Reader
I was sold easily on RSS a long time ago. I would be, I’m a professional Web Developer. Many of you still aren’t convinced (even though you should be). Fair enough. It’s weird letters, and you do even weirder stuff with those letters: aggregate. And- holy crap, I just read your minds: “Mikull, you’re really aggregating the hell out of us by shoving this RSS nonsense down our throats!” Well, maybe; or just maybe if I offer you chocolate chip Goolge dough ice-cream, you’ll pull out your spoon, at long last. “There is no spoon.” You’re right, but now Google Reader is mikull.com approved. It’s time for some orange square.
Yes, I’ve converted. Apple cult members say RSS came from Steve, but sadly Microsoft were the true pioneers of said technology. I’ve never had good fingers for XML, but my first content feeds were published back on the ‘michael’ website in the early 00’s. (It’s ok to say 00’s sexy if you want. Otherwise, please sing it.) Local HTML? Lame! So I rediscovered the web with Firefox, and live bookmarks in my toolbar made me cool again! That is, until I stopped using Outlook and started using Thunderbird. Nice little RSS feature from the bird- but it was ultimately the Sage plugin that dominated by feed reading habits for the longest. Trends came and went, aggregation offered by so many services, but to the leaf did I stay true. I tested many, but always came back. That is, until the last couple of weeks, when ProfeC started telling me about Google Reader awesomeness.
I tried Google Reader when it was first launched, and was truly unimpressed. They’ve developed since. They’ve done good, and I have to tell you: this may be the reader you were looking for. It’s got a nice interface, which you can customize a bit more with some Firefox plug-ins and reader enchancements. It allows for tagging, bookmarking, sharing, and even feeds- of your feeds! I am really down with an online, one-stop shop for feeds as opposed my backwards server code keeping my cache based Sage feeds up to date. Mark as read, tag or share- without having to hit up the ever expanding del.icio.us account just because I want to come back to something. Give it a spin, feed readers young and old. Let us know what you think!
Filed under: Geek, Web Development
[...] Mikull wrote up an article giving me props for re-introducing him to Google Reader. Like Mikull, I had used many tools to read my feeds but I [...]
Mike,
On my tour around Feed Readers (Still haven’t found the best) brought me into the Google Train stop as well. And as you were unimpressed, so was I. I still have not found a comparable solution and may head back to Sage.
If flock allowed Folders (or at least sub tags) in it’s bookmarking I may switch back to that. To date, there has been no comparison (in my book) to the News Reader in Flock.
i must say, i was not ready to switch from sage at first. i now believe google surpasses sage in many ways… i would reconsider it as your solution.