4 Features/Changes Google Reader Needs to Move Forward
After using Google Reader for just over a year, I’ve got a few features I’d like to see added/changed. Some are simple, and some are not so simple.
- Deduping/Dupe Filtering. Many of the feeds I read report on the same news, with the same link(s) in the articles. I don’t need to see something 2,3,4,5 times… and while each post is slightly unique, the linked to content is the same. So I’d like to be able to turn on a feature to de-dupe posts, and rank my feeds (eg: so I can prefer Engadget over Slashdot over Digg).
- Better Error detection on adding feeds. I was tweaking some RSS feeds a few months back, and they just didn’t appear - no new content. I had to use some other RSS readers to debug exactly what part was malformed, that Google Reader didn’t like.
- Tags that exist after I’ve unstarred/read an item. Maybe I don’t get the concept, but I want to Tag an article, so I can reread it later, without it staying in my Starred Items list. Searching previous items is close, but if I’m researching something for a specific project, I’d tag the posts, and then want to recall all of them later - wether or not I’d read them all.
- Ability to find other feeds by seeing what other readers of a specific feed are reading. Google Reader does this to a degree with the Recommended list, but I want to pick one of my subscriptions, see that it has 4 other readers, and I’d like to see what feeds they have. The Recommended seems to work on large volumes - ie: 1000’s of subscribers. I want to go find out what the 4 other people who are reading John Smith’s blog are reader, since we’ve got something special in common.
Google Reader - 1 year later
It’s actually been a few weeks longer than a year, but close enough. First, the current stats:
Compared with a year ago, I’m reading more than double the number of feeds, but slightly less articles. Most of this has to do with dropping a few feeds that were 90% duplicates (unfortunately this means I do miss out on 10% of unique content) and adding more blogs, which are updated much less frequently.
Since getting an iPhone I’m reading about 1-2% of articles there - but mostly Starring things for later review.
Next post will be 5 features/changes I need Google Reader needs to move forward.
Google Reader Stats, Redux
It’s time for an update on Google Reader. Since my last post on July 27th, I’ve added a number of new feeds, but overall the numbers of articles hasn’t really increased. I’ve also noted that I haven’t starred or shared any more items, even though the numbers of feeds and articles have increased. Based on that, I should be able to drop some feeds from the list, but still get the important posts - we’ll see what the next 60 days brings.
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