Vlad

I’m generally not a Google fanboy. Really! Though, I do think their search is the best thing since sliced bread and Gmail is the greatest free service (just a figure of speech, nothing is free these days). And I love the Reader.

Web feeds (RSS or Atom) are great if you want to track blogs, discussions, news and web sites of all kind. I’ve been using them for some time and I have a strong feeling I’ll stick to them some more. But consuming them is a long story. In time I’ve used numerous systems. Some were desktop apps, others were web services. I’ve had my share of passing OPMLs from one program/service to another.

The biggest issue with feeds is that they usually come with a large data footprint. Although there are some that only get updated a couple of times a week/month, there are also those that come with tens (maybe hundreds) of updates a day.

How do you retrieve all this information?

If you’re using a strictly desktop app then you’ll be confronted with this problem first thing after adding a feed: you’ll need to set an update/retrieval plan. This is no problem for those with few updates but can be tricky for frequently updated feeds (especially since most feeds are limited to a fixed number of items). And who knows what you might miss when you go offline for a longer period of time?

Luckily, web services don’t have this problem. They (at least the good ones) have good uptime and are quite reliable. Also, nowadays most desktop feed readers integrate nicely with at least one or two web services, allowing you to get items that were published while you were offline.

Google Reader takes great advantage here of Google’s distributed data crawling architecture. This means there’s a very small chance you’ll miss something. The downside is that you can’t decide for yourself how often each feed is to be checked, Google does that based on recorded frequency of updates.

Where do you keep all the data?

That’s probably the number one reason for using a web service. Then you don’t have to worry, it’s their problem. And it’s also a lot more efficient to have a common repository for a HUGE lot of feed items and give users access to them based on their feed subscriptions. Also, when using a web service, the data is as available as the service. You can read your feeds at work, at home, on your mobile or even on a public computer or info kiosk, all you need is a decent Internet connection.

This sure trumps hauling back and forth your 6 GB archive of feed items on a memory stick from work to home. It’s also a strong point for Google Reader since their storage system is really fast and (seemingly) offers infinite capacity. The downside is that you’re putting the data in the hands of strangers and should Google go bankrupt or close the service you might find yourself empty handed.

And if you don’t have an Internet connection at hand, you can always take (some of) your feed items offline (using Google Gears).

How do you keep information organized?

Millions of items are worthless if you haven’t got a system to keep things organized. Unless you’re shuffling like Robert Scoble. Some use category, others use tags, some use both. Make sure you pick what you need, right?

Reader uses both categories (folders) and tags. But you can’t have nested categories/folders. And you can’t easily rename folders or move all subscriptions from one folder to another at once. This is a bit lame so I’ll get over this section quickly

Actually I won’t mind if I’m able to attach stuff (notes, links, photos, etc.) to items. Any time soon, Mihai?

Will you be able to find something later?

Remember that 6GB archive I was ranting about a few paragraphs before? Yup, it’s got a purpose… How many times have you thought: Hey, I read something about this some while ago! Let me see my feed archives ?

Well, this is where Google Reader almost blew it: search was only introduced a good two years after the service was launched. The good part is that it’s fast and works as you would expect it too (you know: Google-like).

Can I share?

Are you a social animal? Then you need to share! This is where Reader is at its best. You can share items with your friends (Gmail and/or Talk contacts) as easy as pressing one button.

There’s also the possibility to share specific tags. Since shared data is available as a web feed you can use it anywhere you like. I’m using my shared items on this blog’s sidebar.

Other goodies

These include:

• Keyboard shortcuts, making for a fast and easy usage.
• Trends/Stats, which are great for periodical review of you reading habits and subscriptions cleanup.
• Recommendations.
• Nice integration with Firefox, although it could be streamlined a bit more.
• Possibility to add stars to favorite items.

Wishlist

• To be able to customize the fetching schedule for some feeds.
• Adding comments/notes to feed items.
• Easier tags/folders management.
• Intelligent comment tracking for selected feeds and items – bringing together comments on the original site, trackbacks and comments on sharing sites (such as Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.)

Janos, I guess it took more than 2 words after all!

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