Saturday, October 08, 2005

Google RSS Reader!

Not really about my MBA, here, but another meta-post on blogging, and/or keeping up with bunches of regularly-updated websites - to my non-techie MBA friends and readers who haven't yet found RSS readers - Let me make yet another plug of them as a concept in general - they will increase the productivity of your web surfing tenfold, if not more. It may sound silly, perhaps, to increase the efficiency of your web surfing, but if you're like me and try to follow tons of websites - of both professional interest (e.g. business, economics, finance, etc) and leisure interest - it's no joke. This is another thing you'll want to be ahead of the curve on, not behind it.

Anyhow - As I wistfully posted a while back, I really wanted Google to buy out Bloglines, or otherwise offer an RSS reader of their own.

Wish no more - They've got it! Of course, it's still in beta and all that, but of course, as with anything Google, they've put their own spin on it and done it up even better! For those into the whole Web 2.0 thing, it is definitely a move in that direction.

Thus far, it's very cool. It took me a second to get used to the interface - they use tags ("Labels"), of course, instead of folders. All very AJAXy - quick, snappy, and all that good stuff. Though, with my 85 feeds (and counting), it does bog down every so often. ;-)

I was able to export my Bloglines list to an OPML file (hint: you have to view your blogroll publicly, and look at the bottom to Export Subscriptions - mine), and upload all my feeds - migration took all of maybe 3 minutes. God bless open standards.

There's still a few things they could do - again, still in beta - but overall, a very nice reader. I'll probably keep my Bloglines account active for a bit, but I sense a migration to Google's Reader.

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