Blogging Roller

Dave Johnson on open web technologies, social software and software development

Switched to Google Reader

I was pretty impressed how quickly Google was able to help my brother out when his Gmail account apparently disappeared. That makes me feel a lot better about trusting Google to manage my precious data.

Another reason to trust in Google is that they make good stuff. I decided to try Google Reader for a couple of days. I figured I'd be back to NetNewsWire after a couple of days, but now I'm hooked and I'm not sure I'll ever go back. The only things I miss are hierarchical folders and smart-subscriptions, which I was using to subscribe to a search within my subscriptions, e.g. alert me when any of the feeds I'm reading mention "roller". I'd like to see better blog-search integration in Reader and features like FeedDemon's popular topics.

Dave Johnson in General • 🕒 04:42AM Sep 26, 2007
Comments:

I'm going thru a similar transition, but I'm not 100% convinced to move to Google Reader completely yet. I've just become a total convert to Google Docs, and am evangelizing it for use within our group. I tried Google Reader, and imported all my subscriptions from NetNewsWire, but as expected, the Google Reader UI is taking some getting used to. I often ask myself... why do I want to struggle with new interfaces when I already have an elegant one with software like NetNewsWire? I just like the idea of having all this online, and not dependent on a computer I'm on (of course, NetNewsWire does have it's online component -- albeit NOT free, right?) Plus, I sort of *fear* Google a bit now...

Posted by Brandon on September 26, 2007 at 12:07 PM EDT #

Brandon,

I loved the NetNewsWire UI too, but the Reader UI is what really hooked me. It took me about 5 minutes to understand the key-board shortcuts I needed to get a good skimming and reading workflow going.

- Dave

Posted by Dave Johnson on September 26, 2007 at 12:34 PM EDT #

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