Exploring Google Reader Play

March 15, 2010 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Reader, Reader Play 

Let’s be honest here, not all of us use Google Reader to find some interesting stuff online, such as blog posts and articles. Nowadays, people want accessible and simple apps and tools. Although, Google Reader is easy to set up, other people still don’t want to  take the time to do it. Good thing Google had just released Google Reader Play, a new tool that makes the best stuff in Reader a lot more accessible for all users.

Google Reader Play is such an interesting, easy-to-use, and fun product without the hassle of any setup. It lets you browse topics and stories using enlarged images and auto-playing videos on a black background. Viewers can add a star, like, or share cool stories. Just click the star icon to mark them for later use and viewing. Click the like icon for the stuff that interests or you enjoyed the most. You can also share items and posts to your friends and followers by clicking the share icon.

Many users are still skeptical to try this new product. But with my great web browsing experience using Reader Play, other online aficionados should definitely try and explore it. Also, Reader Play is not going to replace Google Reader. As a matter of fact, they are intended to complement each other– for searching and reading interesting topics online.

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More Sharing Features in Google Reader

May 11, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Reader 

Google Reader surprises us once again with its new features.

A few months ago, we started sharing our interesting feed items to our friends in Gmail Chat and Google Talk. Our shared items had also been open for public viewing. Then recently, Google have added again new cool features that seemed to be a threat for del.icio.us and Twitter. The features I am talking about are the “Note in Reader” bookmarklet, and “Share with Note” button.

Share anything

The “Note in Reader” bookmarklet, which we can drag from our notes page, allow us to share any article that we’ve found while browsing the internet. This is indeed a cool new feature since before, we used to send the link to our friends through email or chat when we found an interesting article we would like to share. But now, we don’t have to worry about emailing the link or sending it through chat, all we have to is bookmark the page by clicking the “Note in Reader” bookmarklet. And we can even add notes to it!

Well, if we just want to bookmark the page without sharing it to our friends, all we have to do is uncheck the “Add to shared items”. I don’t think I would use Google Reader though just for the reason of bookmarking. I still prefer del.icio.us since aside from adding notes, I can easily add tags while bookmarking them.

Add notes

There are times that we like to add a reason why we are sharing an item. (If you are using Twitter, for sure you have done that.) And it is now possible when we are reading a feed we feel like sharing. Just click the “Share with note” button located below the feed item that we would like to share.
And just like Twitter, we can also write a note to our friends by clicking the ‘Notes’ link at the left column, below the ‘Shared items’ link.

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5 Google Reader Features I Like

January 26, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Gears, Reader 

Reading the feeds in my Google Reader regularly is one of the habits I want to develop this 2008. So I explored more its features and chose what features would work best for me.

Here are the features I like:

  1. The drag and drop feature – Once I have subscribed to a feed, and forgot to put it in a folder, I can just drag the feed and drop it into the folder it is supposed to be in. This feature is also handy whenever I decide to re-organize my feeds.
  2. Friend’s shared items – My Gtalk friend though doesn’t share as much as I do. He has less free time now to check his reader. But I like sharing interesting stuff. So when he logs back in in his reader, he can just scan my shared items for a quick update on what’s interesting the past days he isn’t on. Since I only had one friend I am sharing my items with, I am not really much affected on the privacy issues other users are concerned about this feature.
  3. Reading Trends – I bet I will like this feature in the near future. As of now, there is no enough data to be analyzed, but my friend Chris did have once. Through the trends feature, he was able to see what were the blogs he frequently read and rarely read. And with the statistics he figured out which feeds to unsubscribe from.
  4. Search - There are times I just want to read post on particular topics like Apple or Facebook. Though I am subscribed to blogs related to these topics, it would be better to see posts about them from other blogs I am subscribed from. So with search in Google Reader, I can easily type in the search box what topic I am interested to read at that moment, and the results to what I am looking for will be displayed.
  5. Offline Viewing – I work at home, and don’t travel much. I don’t own a laptop either, so this feature will not work for me. However, I like to share this to you because I think most of you would find this feature extremely useful especially if you travel a lot, either on a plane or on a train. With this feature, you can keep yourself updated even you are offline. Just don’t forget to install Google Gears and download your latest 2,000 items in Google Reader before you go offline.

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