Google Reader Delights Me

To know me is to know how much of the Internet(s) I traverse in a given day. Often, I run out of Internet(s) to read because it can't make news fast enough. Not only do I check many different types of sites, but I check them all pretty often.

It is, frankly, a huge waste of my time.

I tried using an RSS reader (Thunderbird) a couple times, but the experience was really annoying. I gave up and went back to checking my sites the old fashioned way.

While George has extolled the virtues of Rojo for some time, I didn't like that either.

And then, while I was enjoying my holiday break, I saw that Google Labs has incubated a little something they call Google Reader. Though the name is uninspired, it has changed my browsing habits.


All the sites I visit are subscribed in the left hand pane. I clickity-click a button:


And I only see sites that have unread articles (if there are any). As you can see in this picture, the Internet(s) need to get busy and make some more news. I hit refresh for 147 seconds until Google News made something up:



As you can see, "Google News" appears and it tells me I have (4) unread articles. When I click on the feed, I can get a list view (with just headlines):


Or I can pick the expanded view and see a snippet of each article (along with pictures if there are any):



This way, I can scan the 20 posts that Autoblog puts up in an hour in list view, read the one I want about the Mercedes S-Guard, and mark the rest read. This miracle frees me up to find another way to waste an hour of each work day.