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Just this morning I was telling an acquaintance that part of La Vide Bloga is that you’ve got to remain on high
alert at all times, lest a company or topic that you cover deliver unexpected products or news. Google, especially. A
long-awaited
Google-branded
RSS reader is out, and it’s called Google Reader. Using an Ajax-scrubbed
tagging interface with sliding panels and a space-age look (this must be how the HAL9000 read its feeds), Google Reader
is a pleasure to look at. Early testing reveals problems, notably an upsettingly slow delivery of click results and
unresolved complications importing OPML files from other newsreaders. the interactive tour doesn’t work. Search is
predictably center stage, and Google seems to provide as-good-or-better results than Bloglines in early testing, though
it fails to separate blog matches from entry matches.
As Download Squad
notes, Google
Reader is a stand-alone Web service, not integrated into Gmail as many observers expected. (Google fueled those
expectations by toying with rudimentary Reader features in selected Gmail accounts.) However, Gmail is nicely tied into
Reader via a drop-down menu. More important, Blogger is tied in, launching a pop-up entry-writing window for Blogger
account-holders. I don’t quite like certain details of that feature, but I will save that discussion for the full
review.
More later. Much more. This is important.
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