Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

shokk — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 14:22:18 -0000

A member of the Google Reader team contacted me to tell me that the Loading... bug has been fixed. Indeed, today Google Reader is speedy. Thanks Mihai!

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

shokk — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 08:38:06 -0000

After having loaded all 160 feeds into my reader and waiting a couple of days so that articles could accumulate, I have to say the load time is now attrocious.

You cannot guarantee that you will be able to read your feeds every day, so this is a good simulation of what a skipped day might look like. Also, a good reader should be able to break the data up into usable chunks, where instead it seems to be loading up more than it needs for the moment. All I have for the past 5 minutes is the animated Loading... message. Wheeee!

I'm going to see if I can add UI improvements on my offering to see if the prettier interface attracts more users.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

shokk — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 08:18:58 -0000

The Great Eric,
The solution you are looking for is, of course, to have your Del.icio.us feed be one of the feeds in your Google Reader. Then anything you have bookmarked in Del.icio.us (anything not marked Private anyway) can be reshared from Google Reader to give you an all-in-one solution.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Dan G — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 15:25:39 -0000

I don't understand this "river of news" thing.

Do you really have equal interest in all your feeds? I don't, I find some more interesting than others, so read them often while letting less interesting feeds fill up until I feel like taking a look.

I wouldn't want posts from dead interesting blogs getting mixed in with *everything" from Slashdot, for instance.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Maizal — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 11:43:33 -0000

Finally a Google Video for a product !

Here's another perspective: http://furbyandquackmore.bl...

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Eric — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 10:00:38 -0000

The "shared items" thing is kind of pointless IMHO, as it assumes everything you'd want to share is in your feeds. I prefer a more del.icio.us like approach, where I can share anything I find on the web. Now, if Google would build out it's bookmarks into a real service and combine the two, then they might have something.

As far as Google Blog Search - I think maybe that's another product that just isn't there. I don't get the "Search failed!" errors I get in Technorati, but Google's Blog Search is spammier and I don't feel like I get the same quality of results. (Hint to Google: Buy Technorati)

I agree that Feed Reading+Blog/News Search+Social Bookmarking would be a killer combination though - maybe we'll yet see that level of integration.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Kevin C. Tofel — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 09:21:22 -0000

Robert, not sure if this function was always there, but have you streamed a podcast from a feed yet? The Google media interface appears when there's an appropriate enclosure element; tried it this morning and it works well!

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Dmitry Chestnykh — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:01:35 -0000

Robert, "Shared items" is like your old link-blog ;)

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

B76 — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:22:38 -0000

Also, looks like the RSS feeds update faster.
My personal Digg.com RSS feed in Google Reader updated after about 10 to 15 minutes ... seemed to take longer in earlier versions.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Mihai Parparita — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 22:51:23 -0000

Hi Robert,

The new Reader has an interface that approximates a River of News style of reading pretty well. Make sure to select "All items" from the top left. It's a link, so you can drag to the toolbar to have that be the first thing you see when you log in.

Thanks for your comments. We know there still many things left to do on Reader, especially in the area of integration.

Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Aaron W — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 22:03:54 -0000

This is tragic! The beauty of the old Google Reader interface was that it WASN'T Newsgator, Outlook, or any of the other RSS readers that treated feeds as if they were email.

I didn't get seriously into reading by RSS until I discovered Reader's "river of news" interface. The "lens" on the left with stories on the right was different (and for my purposes, far superior) to the folder metaphor that everyone else uses.

My biggest problem -- they replaced useful space (a story list) with useless space (a feed list). I don't care about my feed list 99% of the time. Just show me what there is to read! I already know where it's coming from.

Thankfully, Google has left the old interface around as an option -- at least for now. Many of us are chiming in on their forums, explaining what an awful design decision they made.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

gRegor — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:58:09 -0000

Items you mark as 'shared' show up on the 'shared items' page, link appears in the upper left hand menu.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Chris Bellini — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:48:24 -0000

I've been using Google Reader for the past couple weeks after switching from Thunderbird to Firefox Live Bookmarks before trying Google Reader. It was decent before, but I absolutely love it now. The way that items are marked as read as you scroll is way cool :) I'm still baffled as to why we can't search the feeds that we're subscribing to. Hopefully that's on the way.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

shokk — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:46:19 -0000

Yep, the aggregated view is there. I had such high hopes for Google Reader back when it was first released, but it was waaaaay tooo sllooooow. Now, this feels very usable and could even tempting me away from my own RSS reader project.

Still needs a few more features like searching for similar articles, or some sort of grouping of articles that are running the same meme (so I only have to read the same story once =) Needs dinosaurs listing. However, it needs some way of marking ranges of articles that have been read. My MonkeyChow reader has a "Mark up to here" feature which lets you check off a number of items as having been read without having to check off each one. This is pretty useful when you only want to mark off some articles in a list of 200 or so. Something like what GMail offers would be even more useful. The reblogging feature is similar to what I have now, so they've provided a lot of what I already use, and with the Sharing they've improved on it dramatically.

All in all, it's very pretty, and quite usable.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

David — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:39:06 -0000

http://www.google.com/reade...
This is the shared items page where items toggled share end up.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Marshall — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:24:14 -0000

There is a river of news option, that's the first thing I look for too. It's under options, sort automatic. Strange description but what are you going to do? Blogsearch exclusion is strange.

Re: Google Reader updates (and a video too!)

Chris Van Patten — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:09:54 -0000

You can "share" your favorite stories in a special JavaScript module on your site. My friend Peter has such a module on his site - http://peter.hybridweb.co.uk/