Reading with Reader...

I’ve never claimed to be an early adopter of new IT technology. I’ve always remained far ahead of my parents in adoption of applications, which has, to this point, been good enough.

In our first meeting of MI703, Jerry pulled up his Google Reader account to show us headlines that he receives each day. I had heard the elusive term ‘Google Reader,’ but had never used it myself. Instead, I have a list of “Favorite” websites that I check religiously every day. Immediately after class, I logged into my iGoogle account and set-up headline feeds of my favorite sites. It took about 5 minutes and I can now say with confidence that I’ve found my new obsession.

Of course, I still cannot claim to be an early adopter of Google Reader, as beta versions of this application have been available since October 2005. It has even been available via iGoogle since May 2006.

Even during my brief foray into G.R. (yes, I have graduated into abbreviation mode already), I do have a few brief complaints:

1. Some of my subscription views allow for the entire article to show when I click on it to open. Others require me to actually click to the website and read the post there. My general feeling is that if I need to actually visit the website, the G.R. doesn’t save me too much time.

2. I tried subscribing to some larger feeds (Marketplace on NPR for example) and was immediately overwhelmed with the number of headlines that posted in a very short time. I definitely already have an obsessive complex about managing my email inbox so those excessive posts in my “inbox” were enough to cancel my subscriptions – for now at least.

3. Finally, (and these are not my own complaints but others I’ve been reading about online) the application doesn’t provide warnings for subscribing to duplicate feeds, allow for password-protected feeds, sometimes experiences a delay in feed posting to G.R.

Despite my minor complaints, I’m really excited about my newfound tool and look forward to using it for all of my favorite internet reading.