PC Power User - Google Reader The Smart Way

What exactly is Google Reader?

Of all Google's products, this one is my favorite! I was already mentioning it in my previous blog posts, but since this tool is so awesome I wanted to dedicate it an entire article. According to Wikipedia's definition gReader is:

Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. It was released by Google on October 7, 2005 through Google Labs. Reader graduated from beta status on September 17, 2007.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Reader

http://img703.imageshack.us/i/googlereader.png/

Beside theoretic definition, what is it for me? It's central hub of all my information streams that I am following and hopefully it's going to become great sharing tool! Google Reader changed the way I communicate with the web and with my friends, also I use it for market leadership. This web application is awesome way to quickly follow most relevant news to your niche or your main area of interest. So let's say you are blogging about your favorite topic and it's Sport News, with Google Reader, you can subscribe to Top Blogs regarding Sports News and you will have all the information delivered to you as they are published via websites that you are following.

How to use it?

Traditional way of following RSS feed is kinda slow, my neat trick on following blogs you want is simple and it requires extension for Chrome (for all the Mozilla lovers out there I am sure there is corresponding application out there).

Now you should pick a list. Let's say you want to follow my blog, you can do so by clicking the RSS subscription button that you can find now in your address bar. Keep in mind that when you get used to it, you will start following a lot of RSS feeds, there's so many good and high quality information out there, but in order not to get your head confused I highly recommend the use of folder. When you are subscribing to new RSS, there will be option to create a folder, I would recommend you to make a couple. Good example of a folder that can get spammy and kept away from others is "NEWS folder". I usually don't subscribe to news RSS, because they are overloading my reader with chunks of useless data for me mostly, thus lowering my productivity.

Learn to use the Shortcut Keys.

Navigating using the shortcut keys makes things so much simpler. Here’s a list of the easiest keys to remember, and the ones I use most are bold:

ga – Go to all items view.

gs – Go to Starred Items.

gu – Open up Ajax’y dialog to quickly select a particular feed.

gt – Open up Ajax’y dialog to quickly select a tag

s – Star an item

n – Navigate to next item without opening it

p – Navigate to previous item without opening it

j – Open next item

k – Open previous item

o – Open / Close item

r – Refresh. (I think I’ve worn out this key)

t – Pop up dialog box letting you assign a tag to an item. Very cool.

Shift+A – Mark all as read.

U - Full Screen View

Follow your favorite podcasts!

This feature is highly neglected by many users! What I love about this feature, it allows you to pop up the podcast that you want to listen. Here's how to.

Read your feeds offline

Google Gears – It allows you to run Google Reader offline. With Google Gears, you can download your feeds onto your PC and then access GReader offline. It is very efficient, the work you do on GReader while being offline will be synchronized with your GReader account when you next time go online.

Read your feeds on your android

This is my favorite part! You get to read your updates directly on your mobile device. If you wanna download it, you can get it from here. For those of us who are less fortunate, because Google doesn't support all of the countries with their fresh products, second best option is gReader app and you can download it here. I don't read articles although in Google Reader, I use this application instead. It's called InstaFetch and it cleans up all the mess and provides you with awesome reading interface. It's synced with InstaPaper and that's my filter for good material.