Google Reader

I must admit that originally I was not too sure how I felt about Google reader. I could see the usefulness of having all the content you regularly look up/visit in one place, yet did not feel that I visited enough sites on the web to use google reader on a regular basis. I must also admit that I am as fond of visiting separate websites as I am of T.V. commercials, to me, visiting separate webpages is part of the whole internet experience. I felt sad giving up that part of surfing the web. Although, as unsure of google reader as I was I felt that I should give it a fair chance and use it for about two weeks. I must admit that I still visited other sites, mainly because I could not add them to google reader, or in the case of my blog, I decided that I enjoyed visiting my friends page too much to give it up to google reader.

In order to make google reader more relevant or useful, I decided to add not only the regular sites I visited (by copying the web address of the site and pasting it in google readers add subscription box or by finding the RSS option/link on the actual web site/page that I wanted to add to google reader) But to also add sites that I traditionally would not visit, yet felt passionate enough about that I would enjoy reading on a daily basis (for this I used the directory in google reader to search topics of interest to myself to find new blogs/webpages to add to my RSS feeder)

Throughout the two weeks where I used google reader on a regular basis I found myself adding more and more subscriptions to my RSS reader. I also found myself removing a few that I did not feel a connection to. Throughout the entire experience I found that I had somewhere between 300-500 items to read a day. I must admit that I enjoyed obtaining new facts and knowledge on a daily basis and felt that for this google reader was very helpful/useful. Also for my Media and Feminism classes I found google reader extremely helpful to keep track of all the newspapers and articles I had to read on a regular basis. The one downside that I found was on occasion I did not have the time to dedicate to reading all of my subscriptions. I also found it extremely overwhelming if I missed a day or two, very quickly I could have 1000+ items to read with no time to read them. There were also days where I felt that google reader supplied me with too much information to ingest after 6 hours of very intense (information overload) class.

All in all I found google reader useful and have decided that it is an easy way of keeping track of the sites I enjoy reading and what I have and have not read. I also really enjoyed the ability to star items which I found extremely useful or interesting. I really appreciated that ability to keep track of these items and have them all in one place. The ability to then share these items with friends, relatives, and others was extremely helpful and easier than attempting to direct people to particular parts of webpages.