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I use Google Reader, and I like it.

posted under category: General on May 25, 2007 by Nathan

There was a question posted on the cf-talk list about feed readers. In an effort to make everyone exactly like me, I said I use Google Reader, and here's why I like it.

I find the shortcut keys essential, so much so that I keep trying to hit "j" when reading blogs on other sites to get to the next entry. I typically get a few hundred of entries a day, many of which I can go next, next, next right past, then star the deeper stories for later reading.

There's a "share" button on each story that kicks out a feed of its own here's mine). You can find a little widget on the left side of my blog with my latest shared items. I like the idea of sharing what I find that's cool, so there's fresh content on my blog even if I'm not writing anything.

Then there's the Google Reader tools on the iGoogle homepage - I use the Reader pod and have a few individual RSS feeds directly in their own pods. iGoogle is the first homepage I've used since yahoo circa 1996 - I had about:blank until about a year ago.

Perhaps the most fun and obscure feature of Google Reader is the Wii version. It makes reading my feeds simple and fun from the couch. This very responsive interface has naturally easy controls, which I love.

Nathan is a software developer at The Boeing Company in Charleston, SC. He is essentially a big programming nerd. Really, you could say that makes him a nerd among nerds. Aside from making software for the web, he plays with tech toys and likes to think about programming's big picture while speaking at conferences and generally impressing people with massive nerdiness and straight-faced sarcastic humor. Nathan got his programming start writing batch files in DOS. It should go without saying, but these thought and opinions have nothing to do with Boeing in any way.
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