I know I use Google Reader to catch up on my favorite sites. The hard part is making your experience easier. Usually easier means you will use it more. Here are a few ways to make Google Reader easier to use.

Folders

Using folders to sort similar sites together will be the first step in making Google Reader easier to use. Just like in your email, folders help you easily find what you are looking for. By sorting sites into categories that make sense to you, you will be able to pick out posts from sites that are your flavor of the moment.

Eliminate sites

Many blogs simply stop posting new content. If this happens, you can eliminate them from your reader. It is better to bookmark the site as a resource than leave a dead feed in your reader.

You may even lose interest in a topic over time. When this happens, there is no need to keep these sites in your reader. They will take up space and make you feel guilty for not having read the 500 recent posts in that folder.

Use tags

Using tags in Google Reader can make finding a certain articles easier. I have a read later tag for posts that I find the title interesting but can’t read at just that moment. Another good way to use tags is as a sub category. Sometimes you may want to create a folder with an obscure name, but it will not really apply to more than just the one site or article. This is where tagging will come into play.

Instead of creating a folder to house one site or interesting post, make a tag for it. The tags show up at the bottom of same list as folders so you wont forget what tags you have used.

Star your favorites

Another way to keep your favorites easy to find is to star them. Using a star can serve what ever purpose you’d like it to. The star can be used as a read later option or to recall what you started to read and need to finish.

Use Trends to see where your interests are

People change their interests very quickly these days. Trends will tell you what you have been reading lately so you can possibly eliminate sites or topics you no longer read.

Search for bundles

Bundles are a bunch of sites that someone likes and wants to share with others. If you own or write for several sites, you could create a bundle for other people to subscribe to your work.

Conclusion

Google Reader is like many other web applications. It is made for a specific task, but by using a little imagination, you can make it work the way YOU want it to. Whether that is through browser extensions, the way you organize it or by using third-party applications.There is always a different possible use than originally intended.

Installation

RSS Share for Google+ and Google Reader (henceforth referred to as RSS Share) is a Chrome/Chromium extension, so yes, you will need to be running Google’s browser. If you haven’t already tried Chrome, you may be surprised by the speed and simplicity of the UI.

The extension can be installed from this page. It’s a simple one-click install that should operate like any other Chrome extension.

What it Does

The features, as described by the developer, are as follows:

• “Share on Google+” button in Google Reader
• (Optional) Add Google Reader section to Google+
• Show read and unread RSS items on Google Plus
• Choose if read items are shown
• Instantly share any link
• Google Reader unread count on Google Plus
• j/k key bindings for scrolling through RSS items on Google Plus
• Infinite scrolling for RSS items
• Click on title to refresh unread count
• Tree view of feeds

Usage

First, if you have any Google+ or Reader tabs open, you’ll want to fully refresh them after the extension is installed to make sure the page is rendered with the new bits included. In Reader, you’ll now see a Share with Google+ option at the bottom of each post.

which will bring up the sharing interface familiar to any Google+ user.

That’s nice and all, but RSS Share actually has another trick up it’s sleeve, and it’s a good one. If you open up your Google+, you’ll see that you’ve now got a list of your feeds in the sidebar, under your stream options.

Clicking on any of the titles will bring up the feed in Google+.

Unfortunately, I have yet to find a way to post entries from Google+ to Reader, but I suppose when you consider that those items are in an entirely different format from RSS and have security and other considerations applied, it makes some technical sense.

Conclusion

It’s been this author’s experience that many similar extensions tend to feel clunky and tacked-on. RSS Share for Google+ and Google Reader is the first I’ve found that integrates seamlessly, and feels like it belongs in the base applications. There are times when such things seem useful at first but quickly get forgotten, but RSS Share is something I’ll be keeping around for a while.

FeedSquares is a Google Chrome extension that shows your Google Reader feeds in a beautiful feed wall. Each square on the wall represents a single feed and the first image from each feed is used as the background for each square. The result is a visually stunning photo wall.

When you click on a square (or feed), the article list from the feed will appear as a scrolling (horizontally) panel at the bottom of the wall. You can scroll through the list to look for interesting article to read. Clicking on the article will pop-up a window with the article content.

At the end of the article, there is also a box with all the various social sharing options. You can “star”, “like” or even share the article. FeedSquares sync with your Google Reader, so whatever changes you make here will be reflected in Google Reader as well.

If you have organized your RSS feeds into various folders, these folders will be displayed as a navigation link above the feed wall. At the bottom of the wall, there is also a link for you to switch between day and night mode. The night mode comes with a dark purple background and is more soothing to the eyes.

At the backend, there are several options that you can configure for FeedSquares, including feed refresh interval, use secure connection, show unread counts and many other options.

FeedSquares Android app

FeedSquares also comes with an Android app (free) that you can install on your mobile phone. It is pretty cool too.

If you are into fancy stuff, do give FeedSquares a try. It is nice, fun and pretty impressive, definitely better than the dull Google Reader interface.

FeedSquares | Android app

In case you are still not aware, most, if not all, the blogs in the whole Internet provide a RSS feed that you can subscribe in a feed reader. Some of these blogs provide a partial feed that shows only the headline and a small excerpt. To read the full content, you will have to visit the actual site. From the reader’s point of view, this is a bad user experience and does not aid in productivity.

So, what solutions do we have?

1. Super Google Reader

If you are using Google Reader as your primary feed reader, then Super Google Reader is one extension that you need to install. Super Google Reader is a Google Chrome extension that enables full content feeds for Google Reader. It integrates directly into Google Reader and allows the reader to read full content from a partial feed.

After the installation, you will find 3 new buttons (Readable, Link, Feed) on top of each feed. Clicking the “Readable” button will fetch the full content from the source, strip it to the bare minimum and display it in your feed reader. The “Link” button will load the actual site with an iframe.

Super Google Reader can be set on a per-feed or per-folder basis. To configure Super Google Reader for feed folder, simply select the option from the Super Setting dropdown. I find the “pre-fetch all readable content” particularly useful.

2. Full Text Rss Feed

Unlike Super Google Reader, you don’t have to install any extension to use Full Text Rss Feed and it works in every browser. What Full Text Rss Feed does is take a partial feed that you provided and churn out another RSS feed with the full content. You can then subscribe to this churned feed in any feed reader and enjoy the full content.

The advantage of Full Text Rss Feed is that it works across browser and various feed readers. On the other hand, its disadvantage is that the update interval might not be as frequent as you wish and you could be missing out the latest news from your favorite site.

3. FiveFilters

As the same as Full Text Rss Feed, Five Filters allows you to input a partial RSS feed and churn out another feed with the full content for you to subscribe. What makes it different is that it comes with two favours for you to choose: hosted or self-hosted.

Hosted

“Hosted” means you are using the service hosted on FiveFilters server. The basic feature is free, but is only able to display three items per feed at a time. The premium option (costs 8 €/month) removes the limitation and allows you to grab up to 10 items per feed.

One thing that I like about FiveFilters is that it comes with a bookmarklet (drag the link to your browser’s toolbar to use it) where you can easily drag a partial feed to your browser toolbar and get it to churn out the full content feed.

Self-hosted

For a one-time fee of 20 €, you can buy the source code of FiveFilters and host it on your own server. In this case, you can provide your own partial-to-full-rss service without having to depend on others. You can configure options such as the number of items to fetch per feed, update interval and the content extraction method.

For casual users, it can be difficult to justify the cost, not to mention that you have to maintain a server as well. However, for busy professionals or journalists, this can be a great solution to the partial feed headache and also a potential time saver.

4. Unsum

The beauty of Unsum lies in the flexibility of its services. By default, Unsum will grab the HTML code of the partial feed link, strip out the tags and miscellaneous content and show only the actual page content that we are interested in. Unfortunately, this will not work for some sites due to their complex HTML structure. For such cases, Unsum gives you the flexibility to specify the start and end of the HTML code where it should look for the content. You can even use regular expression.

Other options that you can configure include the caching time (the update interval) and the feed name.

Conclusion

The services mentioned above have their own pros and cons. You will have to try them all to find the one most suitable for you. Personally, I love the Super Google Reader extension because I am both a Chrome and Google Reader user and It makes things dead simple for me. Let us know which one is your favorite. One more thing, we provide full Rss feed, so don’t forget to subscribe to MTE feed if you have not done so.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when Google finally launched a dedicated Google Reader application for the Android platform. At this point the application is essentially a front-end for the mobile website, however it is fast, light and simple to use.

Basic Usage

The main page of the Google Reader app is similar in style to the mobile website. Under the “Home” section, you can browse all the new news stories (“All Items”), your starred stories (“Starred Items”), the stories you have shared (“Your Stuff”), stories shared by the people you follow (“People you follow”) and finally stories that would interest you, as selected by Google, (“Explore”). If you use the Google Reader website you will notice that the list of options in the Android application is almost identical to the one on the website and this makes navigating the mobile application fairly straightforward.

Beneath the “Home” section you can view all your subscriptions. Since, I have my subscriptions grouped into folders I can only see the different folders I have created.

To view a story simply click on a feed (or folder) to open up the list of new stories. For example, I clicked on “Starred Items” to view all the stories I had previously starred.

This is where the biggest weakness of the Google Reader Android application is most noticeable. Since the application does not store news stories offline, each time you launch the application to view a story it has to be downloaded from the internet and this can take some time depending on your connection speed.

Once the folder you want to view has loaded you will be presented with a list of news stories sorted by the newest first.

By clicking the menu button on your phone you can refresh the feeds, mark all as read, view all items (i.e. those that are unread) or change the way the feeds are sorted (newest, oldest or “by magic”).

To open a news story simply click on it and it will load in a new page. I actually prefer the way the mobile website of Google Reader loaded the stories. Instead of opening a new page, it simply dropped down the story in the current page. This made viewing a large list of stories much easier.

Similar to the Google Reader website you are able to star a story, “like” a story, share a story, add a note to a story or mark the story. Additionally, by clicking on “More” you can tag or email the story.

Basic Options

Clicking on the menu button from the main Google Reader page presents you with the option to refresh the feeds, subscribe to new feeds, show updated feeds, search for new feeds, change your Google Reader account and other additional settings (see below).

Clicking on “Show updated” limits the feeds displayed to only the ones that are updated. This caused a slight problem for me as it hid the feeds without stories on the Google Reader website and for some time I was unable to figure out why. In my opinion enabling this option should not change the Google Reader website since space is not limited.

The “Subscribe” option is quite useful if there is a feed you want to subscribe to while away from your computer.

Firstly, you can either search for a feed, by entering a keyword or URL, or you can track particular keywords.

Secondly, you can follow particular people through various social networking sites.

Thirdly, you can browse a list of feeds on various topics.

Other Settings

Finally, clicking on “More” gives you the option to re-arrange your feeds, hide unread counts, use default icons and toggle the ability to navigate the feeds using your volume keys and to enable plug-ins.

Conclusion

As I noted earlier, the Google Reader mobile application is simple and effective. However, at this point it is merely a front-end for the website. There are few compelling features that make it a must have application. Nevertheless, if you are a regular Google Reader user, whether on your computer or through the mobile website, there is no reason why you would not want to start using this application.

Image credit: benstein

If you are looking for ways to increase the font size of Google Reader site (or any other sites that don’t allow scaling) so as to increase the readability, here is a simple hack using bookmarket.

Launch your browser in Android.

Launch your menu and go to the Bookmarks options.

Add a bookmark.

Give your bookmark a name, such as “Enlarge Font”. In the Location field, enter the following javascript:

javascript:(function(){var theBody=document.getElementsByTagName('body');theBody[0].style.fontSize=prompt('Font Size?','');})()

Tap on “OK” to save the bookmark.

Now go to the Google Reader site and access your favorite feed.

To enlarge the font, go to your bookmark and load the bookmarklet that you have just added. You should see a popout window, prompting you to enter the font size. You can now enter the font size you want, and don’t forget to include “px” at the back.

Press OK and that’s it. Your page is magically enlarged.

Other than absolute pixel size, you can also use words like “large”, “larger”, “x-large”, “xx-large” to increase the font size.

The above trick should also work for any site that doesn’t allow scaling. It will also work in iPhone, iPod Touch and other mobile devices that support bookmarklets.

Let us know in the comments if this is useful to you.

Image credit: Johan Larsson

I love the always available convenience of Google Reader and the fact that I can take all my feeds with me wherever I go but I’ll have to admit that I’m not really a big fan of the user interface and I’m sure if the Google engineers sit together for a night or so, they can probably even come up with a better interface.

Till that happens, however, I’ve decided to use this wonderful add-on for Chrome, my browser of choice, that super-charges Google Reader into something incredible.

FeedSquares is an extension for the Google Chrome browser that displays all your subscribed feeds in a visual manner that looks cool and retro at the same time.

Installing FeedSquares, like all Chrome extensions, is a snap and once you have it installed, you can’t miss the small pink colored square button. Click the button to launch feedsquare for the first time.

FeedSquare requires you to login to Google Reader before you start using it.

As soon as you login to Google Reader, you’re taken to the FeedSquare homescreen that looks something like this.

Isn’t that cool?

The reason I also said it looks retro is because the home screen reminds me of a magazine or comic books shelf at the local library. And that is what I like the most about this extension. At a single glance, I can see which one of my subscribed blogs have had updates and the number on the upper right hand corner also tells me the number of unread items that I have in that particular blog. It almost gives me the same joy going through my feeds that I used to get going through the comic books section of a library as a kid.

Clicking on one of the unread feeds, opens up a small area at the bottom of the window and all the unread items from that feed are displayed over here. You can then just click any one of the posts and feedsquares opens it in a window of it’s own over the main interface.

Doesn’t that beat the pants out of Google Reader ?

FeedSquares doesn’t offer much by way of customization right now and I’d love to see them work more on that aspect of their interface. Other than that, FeedSquares has almost replaced Google Reader for all my Weekend feed reading.

So, which one is it for you? Google Reader or FeedSquare? If you ask me, I’d still use Google Reader if I’m looking to get something done quickly and Google Reader’s largely text based interface lets me just concentrate on the actual content. But, when I’m looking to get some work done visually or when I’m just looking to get an idea about the state of all my feeds, FeedSquares is what I’ll prefer.

Which one do you prefer?

All you want is a simple solution which will let you read your emails and RSS feeds at a central place. Microsoft Outlook 2007 has a solution for this.

Microsoft Outlook 2007 can be used to import Google reader subscriptions and read RSS feeds alongside your daily emails. You can also choose to open Google reader right inside Outlook to read blog updates.

Export Feed Subscriptions From Google Reader to Ms Outlook

Follow the steps below to add RSS feeds in Microsoft Outlook:

1. Log in to your Google Reader account and click the “Settings” link placed at the top right corner of the browser window.

2. Go to the “Import/Export” tab and click “Export your subscription as an OPML file”. This will export an OPML file containing the information for all the RSS feeds to which you have subscribed.

3. Open MS Outlook and right click the RSS feed link from the sidebar. Select “Import an OPML file” and browse to the file that you exported in step 2.

4. Select the RSS feeds which you want to export in Microsoft Outlook. You can select all the feeds by clicking the”Select All” button or you can import selected feeds by checking the box placed on the left of that feed.

5. Microsoft Outlook will import the selected subscriptions and then you can read blog updates right from your favorite email client.

When Microsoft Outlook runs in your system tray, it will auto fetch all the updates so you can carry out your official tasks as usual.

Open Google Reader inside Microsoft Outlook

You can also open Google reader right inside Microsoft Outlook. This will let you enjoy reading feeds in Google reader and without leaving outlook. Following are the steps involved to open Google Reader within the Outlook window:

1. Open outlook and click the RSS feed icon from the sidebar. Select “Properties” and navigate to the “Home page” tab.

2. Enter the URL as http://www.google.com/reader in the address box and select the checkbox “Show home page by default for this folder”. Click “Apply” and then “Ok” to save the changes.

3. Now whenever you click the RSS icon from the Outlook sidebar, Google Reader will open. Sign in to Google reader and you can read the RSS Feeds as you normally do.

Comparision – Manual Export vs Opening Google reader in Outlook

Below is a short comparision of the above two methods used to read RSS feeds in Microsoft Outlook:

Now its all upto you, whether you will prefer to read the RSS feeds by importing the OPML file or by opening Google Reader in Microsoft Outlook. Let us know your ideas in the comments section.

In the short time extensions have been available for the Chrome browser, quite a few add-ons have popped up to alleviate the RSS deficiencies. Below are 13 different extensions to ease your RSS withdrawal. Granted many of these do the same basic function, each can add something unique. By no means do you need every extension on the list, but its nice to have more than one option to try.

1. Google Reader Subscribe

This extension does exactly what the name implies. When you visit a page with a feed, you will see a Google Reader icon in the Chrome browser address bar.

When you click on the icon you are taken directly to your Google Reader and given the option to add this site to your list of automatically updated feeds.

2. RSS Subscription Extension

The biggest difference with this extension over the Google Reader extension, is you have four preset readers to choose from. More can be added if you have something else you prefer to use.

3. TCGoogle Reader

TCGoogle Reader is a combination notifer, subscriber and conduit to reading articles in the feeds you are already subscribed to. This works a little different than most because it does not take you to a reader to read the new articles. It opens up the actual post on the website in new tabs. If you choose to, you can go to Google Reader instead.

4. Google Reader Checker

This is probably the most basic extension of the group. The unread count is displayed in your toolbar. When you click the icon, you are whisked away to your Google Reader homepage.

5. Google Reader Unread Count

Just like the Google Reader Checker, you are given an icon displaying the unread count in Google Reader. What makes this one different is it shows the true count when it reaches 1001 or higher. Most other notifiers will show 1000+.

6. Flickr Zoomer

If you subscribe to anyone’s Flickr feed, you know the pictures come through the feed in a small view. To see a larger version you need to click the link or the picture to see a larger view. Flickr Zoomer eliminates this step by showing a larger view right in your feed reader window.

7. Tabbed News Reader

If you are a news junkie, this extension will give quick access to the five most recent news articles from Google News. You can select from seven categories in the popup window.

8. Force Feed

Force Feed is a little different than the other subscribe to extensions. If the page does not offer a RSS feed of any kind, you will see a blue RSS icon. When you click it, you will be taken to Google Reader just like normal. The feed is created and works like normal thanks to the Page2RSS api.

9. UnBurner

The description on the download page says it best – “Strip stupid junk from end of links opened from Google Reader”. I am sure you have seen all the extra information at the end of a long URL. Use this extension to eliminate the excess clutter.

10. Video Reader

Video Reader adds the ability to play videos and podcasts right in your reader. Like Flickr Zoomer but for video, it saves time and clicks.

11. Revolver RSS

Revolver RSS is a great add-on if you surf your RSS feed articles like you surf the channels on your TV. In the options for the extension, enter the feed address. From that point on, when you click the Revolver RSS icon, the current tab will rotate the pages of the newest articles on the website.

You can change the time it stays on each page. If you’d like to see more than a glance, click the icon again to stop the rotation.

12. Feedly

I have to admit, out of all the RSS extensions I have tried, Feedly is by far my favorite. It changes the entire layout of Google Reader making it more eye pleasing. Instead of line after line of text and headlines, Feedly groups post together, adds featured articles, pictures and different ways to search.

See what I mean? That is much more appealing than the normal Google Reader, isn’t it?

What Google Extensions do you use to get your RSS fix?

image credit Kyle Wegner

Below are the top three web RSS Readers that you can use to manage your RSS feeds:

1. Google Reader

Google Reader provides its users with a simple interface that gives them a lot of options to manage their RSS feeds. You are able to sort feeds into folders and tag the feeds’ content. Google Reader provides a variety of ways to share feeds:
1. Email the information to different recipients, or
2. Share it on your personalized, public Google Reader page.

Google Reader also gives you the capability of connecting with your friends and seeing their shared items. If there is a particular item that you want to bookmark to read later, but don’t want to share it, Google Reader allows you to star it. Recommendations are given according to the feeds that you subscribe to. Overall, it’s a robust and easy RSS Reader that can be read from any computer or mobile phone.

2. Feedly

Feedly is a Firefox-only add-on that builds on top of Google Reader. It interfaces with Twitter and FriendFeed, so you are able to keep up with the conversations on the two sites as well. Like Google Reader, you are able to see your friends’ shared items, star items to read later, and hide the items you have already read.

One of the best things about Feedly is that gives you three ways to view your feeds: Cover, Digest, and Latest. Cover gives summary view of all your feeds, tweets, visuals, etc. Digest is more of a detailed view. Latest provides a chronological view of all your feeds, starting from the most recent. It provides a prettier view of Google Reader, but it doesn’t give the flexibility of using your browser of choice.

3. Bloglines

Bloglines is a web-based RSS feeder that currently has two versions – Classic and Beta. The beta version provides you with the capability of customizing your own front page. Additionally, it allows you to drag-n-drop feeds into this page. You can choose to “mark as read” individual posts or the entire folder, which is the only option in the classic. Bloglines can be accessible via mobile phones, and it provides you with the capability of customizing your personalized mobile site. It also works with OpenID technology, which means you can quickly login with your OpenID and bypass the troublesome process of registering a username.

As with the other two readers, you are able to save and email individual content. The drag-n-drop function, modifying the front page and mobile site, and OpenID settings are pretty nice. However, it’s missing the sharing functionality within the reader, like the other two readers support.

Which Web RSS Reader do you use?  What would you say is the best functionality of it?  Regardless of your RSS reader of choice, if you read numerous RSS feeds, you need one. It provides a great way to organize and maintain your feeds, and relieve some of the stress of having to sift through all of them.