Well now that I've been using
Google Reader for a decent amount of time, which has included many hours on my
Treo 650, and even a trip out of town, I find myself really liking it, and much more than
Bloglines of late. Mostly I'm sure that I'm liking it since it is 'new' but since it is newer than Bloglines, it has included many features that lets face it, Bloglines is missing, okay maybe it is not missing, but I sure haven't found them useful.... then again, now that I'm also a big fan of
Tumblr and
FriendFeed,
Google Reader fits in a little better (but again I'm sure that I could figure out the same tricks with Bloglines)... Well I guess I should list the a few of the features that I'm finding GR to be better than BL:
- Sharing: well hmm.... BL has its built in blog and clips, but with GR... it is simply easier... plus the easy intergration with FF just makes it even easier to share.
- Saving for later: well, actually I think BL has this one done better with the beta version. The pinning feature in BL is great, plus articles that have been pinned are always in view with the other articles. GR has its 'Starred' items which I've been using in basically the same manner as 'pinning' but since they are not always in view, well I have to remember to go look at them, but at the same time, the 'starred' tools is a great way to separate articles for later review...
- Mobile: Well both the beta of BL and GR have great mobile versions. but I don't know, there is something about the mobile version of GR that is seems more intuitive. Now mind you, I'm on an 'ancient' smart phone (the Treo 650), so if a mobile app works, I'm happy, so first off, I'm just happy that they both work.
Now the only aspect that is still up for debate in my mind is the 'order' in which articles are displayed. For a long time I was a fan of the display one feed at a time and in the order I selected (aka the BL method), but now that my list of feeds is well over 100, I'm starting to see the benefit of pure chronological order. I never realized how much 'duplicate' content was out there, but it is nice to be able to read one writers view followed immediately by another's, and in some cases it helps to able to skip articles that you don't need to read multiple times (things like press releases and new products...). Anyways for now I'll be sticking with GR... (I think I posted way back when GR first came out that I didn't like it, but now...)
One last think... FriendFeed... many have mentioned that it could be the end of Google Reader for them... I don't know, but I will say this... I'm no longer tracking many peoples blogs and other feeds now that I'm following them on FF. So in a way, I kind of like the fact that I can separate some things betweem FF and GR (okay I really don't do that, I actually am subscribed to my FF feed in GR)
