Bloglines you got competition. First impressions : it has a nice interface, with all the Ajax goodness we expect from Google. It has the same look and feel as Gmail. It has labels which can help with creating groups and all. I think just like MyYahoo, this could be a big step forward for RSS and its mass adoption. I am surprised that Google did not do this sooner, for this is low-hanging fruit for them. My biggest worry with this: my vanishing html page-views. I get a feeling if Google could make it faster, leaner and meaner, well I would have no problems switching away from Bloglines.
I tried to upload the OPML export file from NetNewsWire, and failed the first time. Perhaps, because my OPML was “grouped.” Not sure if that is the case, but then tried it using flat OPML, and the import went smoothly, even if painfully slow. So when you open the reader, you find, that only the most recent updated items show up, and you click on them and read them in the white space, as you would be reading an email. Adding new feeds is pretty easy, and simple.
They have a nifty little “search for content” button, and you type in say “web 2.0″ and you get a lot of sources writing about that subject and not in your feed-roll. This is the kind of stuff, our friends at Technorati should have done, but have not. More thoughts later… (Hey Google gang – how about taking this design principle and applying it to Google News and GMail.)
Here’s how to import your My Yahoo subscriptions if ya wanna give Google’s reader a spin…
Good ol’ Jeremy.
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/005384.html
One note, everybody forgets about Kinja but it rocks for quickly surveying rss feeds….uses the “river of news” approach and is much lighter-weight than Bloglines.
(no i’m not affiliated with it ;)
it would be interesting to see the concept of the Context search feature that yahoo is exploring, in conjunction with reading an particular item to see more info – somewhat like alexa.com but not at a site level.
http://yq.search.yahoo.com/
On second thought, maybe that would just be the Related links feature that google already has?
I agree it needs more speed and perfection. Most of the time I was stuck at the loading or oops error occured :)
My take here http://www.emergintex.com/blog/?p=105
I wonder about some of the design choices. I’m not finding an option to group my feeds, I can only see each individual post as it comes in. Also, I can’t update the official Google blog through Bloglines since Reader launched. What an interesting coincidence.
The reason it was painfully slow was because reader was slashdotted. Hehe.
Actually I think the Google Read is pretty cool, and since its going to be used by thousands upon thousands of people, it will probably end up being devved up quite well.
Yet another AJAX RSS Feed Reader which display RSS Feeds in draggable auto-arranging AJAX Feed Windows which self-updates as RSS Feed is updated.