I'm unclear if this is actually a NBC commercial (video) but if it is it's a great example of understanding the medium and making a great commercial for it (I mean it's funny).
The New Google Reader
I always get a little excited when google come out with a great product because it's just nice not to need to remember to go to another website. There are only 2 websites I really care about, my email and my feed reader. Currently Bloglines and Gmail fill this roll.
Previously google came out with a feed reader at it seems like it was targeted more at armature feed readers. Technorati has a similar idea going.
I am not an armature. I have 300 feeds that I do a half decent job of keeping up with. Google has updated their feed reader to come in line with the most popular readers.
Some of the stand out features are that it does not count a post as read until you scroll past it in the reader and other small things like button to jump to the next story.
One thing that really surprises me is though they look very different there doesn't seem to be a large difference between Bloglines and Google Reader.
So what is the difference? In my opinion the difference is the layout. Bloglines has it set up so it uses the entire window for selecting and reading feeds. While google demands to use some of the window for their navigation. Basically Bloglines gets out of my way completely.
Winner: Bloglines
Don’t click though to my website from alpha.bloglines.com and then think I will not notice
Don't click though to my website from alpha.bloglines.com and then think I will not notice. Come on Bloglines, how do I get invited to that magical land of pre-beta?
Bloglines has updated their interface in the left panel to not refresh all 300 of my feeds at the same time
Big day for feed readers. Bloglines has updated their interface in the left panel to not refresh all 300 of my feeds at the same time. This refresh was literally bringing Firefox to a halt and is a welcome update. Bloglines is clearly fighting to keep me off of Google's reader.
Google’s RSS Reader has just gotten a major update to function a lot more like a standard RSS reader.
Google's RSS Reader has just gotten a major update to function a lot more like a standard RSS reader. I have to say I'm highly impressed. They have a lot of work to do to convince me to move from Bloglines but I am very interested so far. I'll hopefully give a more comprehensive review this weekend.