Google Reader and other Google products

Miles has been a long time fan of Google Reader, but it’s only been recently that I converted to using it full time.

I found that I was visiting the same blogs several times a day to see what was new. Once every week or two I was stopping by the less frequently updated blogs, but invariably I’d forget and miss something. In addition I was trying to manage all my concert updates via email, and using sheer curiosity to check Woot.com each day.

So after much cajoling I finally tried out Google Reader – and I love it! I tried it briefly several months ago but didn’t find it at all useful. I suspect it was the typical Google product experience – try once, yeah – it’s okay, then come back a year later and it’s amazing. I went through the same thing with Google itself in 1999, Google News in 2002, Gmail in 2004, Picasa in 2004, and I’m hoping PicasaWeb will be the next one I come back to, because frankly Flickr is kicking its arse. Google Groups and Google Maps were two instant hits in my opinion. Actually that reminds me, the other product I’m loving at the moment is Google Finance which has some of the best visualisations I’ve seen with a supersmooth interface.

Actually now that I think about it, there are still some misses in there. Google Apps is about 6 months down from when I started trying that out, so I’ll give it a bit more time, but Google Calendar has been a disaster. I know that a sync tool must exist, why don’t you release it Google?! Actually it’s interesting to look over the full list – many applications that I had tried and forgot about – Google Sync, Notebook, Page Creator, Base, and Orkut. Plus a whole bunch more I peripherally use.

My favourite feature in Google Reader is the ability to share links. It’s great that you can give them tags, but what I would really love is the ability to post a full comment about each article. I guess that’s what I’m doing on my blog though! To see what I’ve found interesting have a look in my sidebar, or click here.