All the good stuff is on other blogs

I’ve switched from Bloglines to Google Reader recently. I used to think Bloglines was great, but then it started to niggle me. For example, it’s frame based so I couldn’t imbed it in a iframe on my start page I set up. Also, it’s pretty darn ugly. On a whim, I tried out Google Reader and there’s no way I’m going back. Much prettier interface, single frame, and river of news. It’s also much more interesting to read feeds all intermingled rather than by category (Gen Dev, Web Design, F1, etc.) like I used to.

One thing: I’m using n and p to go forwards and back. Don’t know why — I tried it (as a Google Calendar user) and it works, even though it’s listed as something else.

One thing I find annoying is v loads in a new window but I’m convinced I set FF to load new windows as new tabs. If possible, it’d be nice to have a t for load in new tab or something (or is this just my FF settings whacked!)

Also, I miss my Bloglines Subscribe to Feed bookmarklet. I tried the GR Greasemonkey script but I think my Greasemonkey install is fubarred. Oh well, will have to wait for FF2 on Tuesday for their RSS subscription stuff.

Whatever its merits as a reader, there’s a big drawback with Reader as a medium for publishing: for those of us using other tools (and I am sticking with Onfolio until I see a really compelling reason to change even though development is frozen), there is no way of subscribing. There is something which claims to be an Atom link in the HTML, but it comes up empty. The subscribe option within Reader seems to be about creating a closed system – which doesn’t work for me.

Has the multi platform thing altered your perspective on email too? That is the reason that I use webmail these days.

If you’d like to share your starred items, you can on your site or through your public page, too. Go to Settings > Tags.

I have put the links to starred articles on my site and it has been generating quite a bit of traffic.

Doug

Marek: my link blog’s feed is here: http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/14480565058256660224/state/com.google/broadcast

Robert – thanks, I had found that, but Onfolio sits there doing nothing with it. Having poked around a bit, maybe I have been imagining Atom support in Onfolio. I knew I was going to have to find an alternative at some point, but was hoping to put it off for longer – for most things Onfolio does exactly what I want it to.

One drawback to the Google reader that I discovered today was for blogs that require subscription creds, there is no place for that and therefore no feed…

I also have completely switched to google reader. I panned the earlier version and settled on bloglines. I was happy with google reader, but when I discovered that j,j,j in list view would expand only the entry I was reading I was in heaven.

In Bloglines I cruise through my feeds with ‘j’ and ‘s’ (to go to the next feed).
In Google reader, it’s ‘j’ and then Shift-n AND Shift-o to go to the next feed.

Other than All Items, is there a quicker way to speed through feed in Google Reader?

I use All Items. I want a river with all the feeds mixed together. I don’t want to read feeds one by one anymore.

Sorry about that… no idea why that happened twice.

To get the items all intermingled, make sure you only list the updated feeds. Then click on “All Items” in the upper left hand corner under “Home”. Press the “U” to get an almost full screen (it gets rid of the list).

I love it too. Just as soon as they can provide robust feed search and sync my feeds with Feedemon online sync service or provide an offline reader for my mobile / offline reading needs, I’d switch to it full time.

I like Google Reader, too, and keep coming back to it (although I would stick with Flock if Flock were the best browser on my laptop but it’s not–Opera is).

Anyway, one thing I don’t like about Google Reader is the “look” of it. I really like the little favicons beside feed but Google only shows the generic one.

Oh well, I guess that’s not that big of a deal…lol.

I know I’m a little late commenting, but I love Google Reader. I think I’m addicted to it also. That’s funny you mention the first Starbucks in Seattle. I have an aunt that used to work there.