Google Reader: I’m a Convert
To prove I have not turned into a complete crugemedgeon, I suppose I should post something that praises a product. Today, that praise goes to Google.
For a long time I have been using a product called ReBlog on my personal site to keep up with my RSS feeds. Think of it as my own personal bloglines with some Ajax-y goodness. However, ReBlog has it’s issues. It archives everything, and it was starting to take up some serious space. It also provided no means to export the feed list to an OPML file. It had other issues as well.
I’ve used Bloglines in the past, but my issue with them is that they don’t update the RSS feeds often enough. Also their interface leaves a little to be desired.
So when I saw the announcement that Google Reader was updated, I figured I’d at least give it a look. The previous iteration of Google Reader had such a crappy interface that I couldn’t use it. In this current iteration, the interface is a lot cleaner and has the appropriate amount of Ajax-y goodness. I can see only new posts if I want, which is a huge problem with the previous version.
The trick: how do I get my ReBlog feeds into Google Reader? I basically had to export the database from MySQL, output to a CSV file, do lots of hand-massaging, and eventually, everything was imported.
What seems to rock my world with Google Reader is the keyboard interface. I can read RSS without touching the mouse. It’s not perfect, and I’m sure other RSS readers have a reasonable keyboard interface, but this one works well for me.
I have retired my ReBlog-based site and am now using Google Reader. I guess that’s just “that much more data” the fine folks at Google will have about me.
