I Want to Like Google Reader »
I just can't. Sure, the interface is pretty. The keyboard navigation is slick, but who really cares, since you'll end up grabbing the mouse on the next page anyway? I'm sure there are reasons to like the integration with Gmail and Blogger, but I don't use either.
Unfortunately, they missied on one important issue: It just takes so long to read!
With Bloglines, I can select a folder and skim the headlines and be done in a couple of minutes (if even that long). With the Google Reader, I can (perhaps) scroll to the bottom of the list of headlines by hitting the "page down" link a whole bunch of times. I can't even know how many times I'm going to have to do that, as all the page tells me is that I have "more than 20" (40, 60, 80, etc) items.
Even if I rapidly scroll to the bottom of the list of items, there's no way to mark all those items read (even assuming I want to do so). I can somewhat rapidly "scan" the titles, instead of "reading" them, and that does seem to be a bit faster. But it doesn't get me what I want - namely the timely processing of data. Looks like the Google Reader will have to wait for another turn at the plate. Bloglines still gets my vote.
Comments (1)
I have to say that I'm going back to Bloglines as well. Google Reader is slick, and they certainly have worked out the performance issues, but the GUI just doesn't lend itself to efficient feed-reading on a large scale. I thought at first that I might simply adapt my methods to Google Reader, but it's just not happening. Luckily, I was able to import my Google Reader subscriptions back into Bloglines, and so I'm back.
I think Google Reader would be great for people who don't know a lot about feeds, and only want to read a few feeds. While it has the horesepower and technical capability to handle hundreds of feeds, the GUI just doesn't scale up well enough.
Posted by Peter | November 22, 2005 7:58 PM