Friday Feature: Google Reader

If you haven't yet discovered the convenience of Google Reader, boy have you been missing out!

Up until about six weeks ago, I individually checked over 50 blogs a day do updates. That only included people I actually knew, not even any cooking blogs or craft blogs or people-I-didn't-know-but-still-liked-to-read blogs. It got to be very inconvenient and tedious, as only a small handful of my blogging friends update their blogs every day.

Then one day, I discovered Google Reader, and life hasn't been the same since then. Basically, you "subscribe" to all the blogs you read, and anytime there is a new post on one of them, it will show up in your reader, without you having to check each page individually!

Pros:

1. Saves time, saves clicking.
2. Lets you sort your subscriptions and assign tags.
3. Lets you flag entries that you want to keep track of or refer back to.
4. You only have to check one website to check all your blogs.

Cons:

1. If you subscribe to any blog that is "private" (such as mine) where you have to login to read it, you are not able to subscribe to that blog because there is no feed. You still have to check it manually.
2. You cannot see blog layouts (I don't know...this may be a "pro" for some people), including sidebar components, music, etc.
3. You cannot comment on blog posts from the Reader window. You have to click through to the blog (really easy) if you want to leave a note.
   

Both pros and cons: Suggests other sites to subscribe to based on your current subscriptions and your browsing history. Pro because it gives you great new sites to read. Con because (1) you may not like what it's suggesting (i.e., I subscribed to the Red Sox news feed, and now it keep suggesting tons of sports updates for me; I subscribed to one or two crafty-type blogs, and now it suggests tons of them to me, even though I'm not generally a crafty person and am very particular about the ones I do like); and (2) you may like what it's suggesting and end up subscribing to too many (I now am subscribed to 27 cooking/food blogs or websites, only 7 or so of which I read prior to my Google Reader days).

You can find the Google Reader here.