Did you ever wish that keeping up with all your favorite websites was as easy as checking into your email? Or that somebody would keep an eye on the Internet for your sake, choosing interesting stuff and placing it where you can find them easily?

Too incredible to be true, right? But that’s exactly what Google Reader does.

Google Reader was introduced way back in 2005, graduating from beta status in 2007.

For anyone who is not yet familiar with Google Reader, and given that RSS feeds are more extensively used, let me explain……

Google Reader is a web-based aggregator that is capable of reading all RSS feeds that you have subscribed to, so that you can  access them all in one place. Google Reader lets you know each time your favorite websites are updated. You can then, if required, organize feeds into folders, label them, and share the most interesting posts with your friends.

Google Reader is located on the Web at reader.google.com. You can access Google Reader using your Google Account.

Let’s now take a quick look at some of the main features that Google Reader has to offer:

• ‘Add a subscription’ box to subscribe to your favorite websites. You can also search for your favorite websites using keywords.

• An amazing list of keyboard shortcuts.

• ‘List’ view to browse headlines only.

• Sort the reading list by Sort by oldest, Sort by newest and Auto-sort.

• Folders and tags to better organize feeds.

• ‘Share’ interesting feeds with others.

• Send items to Twitter, Blogger, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, etc.

• Get feeds from people you follow – subscribe directly to blogs, photos, or Twitter updates that anyone you’re following has included on their Google profile.

• Take your feeds with you and read them when you’re not online.

• View a feed’s original site, by going directly to the website where the item came from.

• View the date and time of the item entering the system.

• Get feed details – the ’show details link’ under the ‘list view’ tab shows the number of posts published per week and the number of Google Reader subscribers for that blog.

• Feed Recommendations – your reading habits are tracked, and feeds recommended.

Google Reader, as you can see from the above, is a comprehensive web-based RSS feed reader, yet it is simple, flexible and very usable. So, what better way of browsing and organizing your growing list of favorite blogs and websites?

Tags: feed reader, Google Reader, RSS feeds, track favorite websites

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Blog, Google, Open Source, Social Networking, Utilities, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.