A Month with Google Reader

I've been playing around with Google Reader for the last month or thereabouts for the bulk of my blog reading. In general, I'm pleased. I haven't played around with other feed readers, so I can't make comparisons to Bloglines or any others. In fact, I was hesitant to switch to a reader at all because part of what I really like about reading other blogs is looking at the comments and poking around in there and occasionally leaving my own thoughts. I also enjoy surfing other people's blog rolls when I have some free time. I was worried that a reader would remove that enjoyment. I'd say that by and large those fears were unfounded.

Some of this is due to those of you who only publish a partial feed, so if I want to read the whole thing, I have to click over to your blog anyway. I'm good with that - and the Google Reader makes it very easy to do as clicking either the post title or the blog title opens a new window for your viewing pleasure (so you can queue them up and go through your whole reader list first, or whatever. Most of the time I read through the reader and then go through any windows I've popped up after I've looked at everything.) And usually there's at least one window popping event, which gives me ample blogroll surfing opportunities.

Things I don't like are minor and mostly have to do with the delay between publication of a post and it showing up in the reader. This may happen with any reader, I'm not sure (but I imagine that it does). So while I know I post usually between 10 am and 2 pm Eastern, my posts often don't show up in the reader untitl 7 pm or there about. Sometimes it's a bit sooner, sometimes it's not til the next day. That's a tad irritating, like I said, and so my random blog surfing hasn't ceased completely, because I don't quite trust the reader to get me fresh updates when I want them (vs. when it thinks I need them.)

Also, I would really love a Google Dashboard. Since Blogger is Google. And gmail is Google. And the Reader is Google. I'd love to have one little place where I could do my email or make a new post to my blog or see what's new in the reader without having to log in three times. Yes, I know they have the "Google Homepage" or whatever that you can customize. It's not the same as what I'm picturing - and to my knowledge you can't add a blogger widget or anything like that to it. I also know you can get RSS feeds directly to your gmail - haven't played around with that option at all, so I don't know how it compares. I suppose it might cut down on some issues that I'm having, but then it kind of spams your email, unless you set up individual filters for each blog, blah blah blah. Seems like a pain.

Anyway, all that to say, I'm mostly enjoying use of Google Reader and I am still out there reading your stuff! And I'm still surfing over and commenting when I have something to say. And I hope that if you're reading this via a reader that you'll come on over and say howdy now and then as well.

I give Google Reader 4 New Post Notifications out of 5.