Content aggregators are, to use a mildly overused phrase, a dime a dozen. Good content aggregators are harder to find. Thankfully Google decided to apply their, to use an utterly tired phrase, “Web 2.0 savvy” to instantly obsolete every other content aggregator with their Google Reader.
I’ve tried many aggregators, from standalone programs to various hosted solutions. They all had limitations and nagging problems. Google Reader fits my usage perfectly. I don’t have to host it for one thing. For another, the feature set is exactly as I’d like it. I just scroll through all of my new news items, they get marked as read as I scroll. I can catch up at work in a spare minute or at home. Subscriptions are easy to manage, and they provide an easy bookmark to subscribe to new things as you find them.
We’ll derive everything we need from Google some day, food and all.
A Special Christmas Tip
Here’s a tip for you YouTube addicts. If there’s a particular video producer you love, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for that producer. For instance, the NHL produces a weekly highlight reel under the YouTube user NHLVideo. To subscribe to these videos use this format:
[code]http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/nhlvideo/videos.rss[/code]
If there’s a tag you want to watch, like NHL, use this format:
[code]http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/nhl.rss[/code]
With Google Reader you’ll get access to the video off YouTube right on the reader and, like all RSS feeds, it’ll be updated whenever they upload new videos. Yes!
