I like Google services but I'm not a fan of them. Any way what is good must be always mentioned and shared, so this time I will talk a bit about Google Reader.
You probably heard many times the strange term: RSS Feeds or RSS 2.0. Well actually it is a technology that helps publishers (bloggers, news services, companies, organizations, etc) to transfer information to their audience. The concept is similar that a subscription service, so the "feeds" are the units that include information and the subscription is what makes users to receive new information published on that feed. Normally the feeds are organized by topic. Each Blog includes at least one feed. Those feeds are identified with the logo shown to the left.
The problem starts when you subscribe to many feeds, let's say tenths of them. Why is that a problem? well because is like receiving each day one page of tenths of magazines, it is a mess and then normally it is difficult to organize and mark what was interesting, readed, not interesting, etc. the solution is a good Feed Reader.
There are many readers available, each one with a special functionality. Even Internet Explorer 7 is a feed reader. But until now nothing like Google Reader. Why? here some of the reasons:
- It is a web based reader. That means that I don't need to load my computer with software that will make it slower. And of course that when I change PC I just need to login to my account.
- It works very fast.
- It lets me organize my subscriptions easily. It includes functions like marking automatically which articles or posts are already read. It also can send the posts by email and of course each feed can be easily be part of a category.
- It works well with Mobile Phones. This is a great advantage because you could be checking some posts from your phone and when coming back to your PC all what was read is marked like that. If you like a story you can mark it with a star so it will be easy to remember.
- It works fine with the Nintendo Wii!
- It gives you statistics of what you are reading the most.
- It hides all the posts that were read in the past, but also makes it easy to show them all when desired.
- It is free.
- It creates an RSS feed with all your subscriptions!
- If it is well used and the feeds are well organized Google reader can become a "learning" center with all the information one person needs.
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