Talkings of a Tyrant

I’ve been trying out Google Reader, and I like it. I’ve been trying to find a good RSS reader recently, specifically a good web-based RSS reader. Even more specifically, I want something that functions close to how a desktop-based RSS reader functions.

Things that I like in an RSS reader:

1. Quick - duh.
2. Shows complete feed. I don’t like sites like Google’s personalized homepage or Netvibes where all you see are the titles of the posts. It should also load the post in the same page. I can stand a list of headlines if it loads the post without sending me to that site.
3. Don’t give me a “summary page” with every post in a sequence. This is a completely personal quirk of mine, but I’m just not that good at taking 4 or 5 posts of relatively unrelated stuff in at once. It needs to either have headlines and load in the same page (doesn’t send me to a different website), or it goes through the posts on a one by one basis.
4. View by source. I need to be able to organize it by way of which feed it comes from. The only exception to this is Google Reader. In Google Reader, yes, you can view it by feed, but I surprised myself when I found I like the posts ordered in a chronological order from all of the sites.
   

   Say there are three sites A, B, and C. Site A posts at 9:00am, site C posts at 12:01 pm, Site A posts again at 12:30pm, and site B posts at 1:00 pm. Google will show it in the order of A’s first post, A’s post, A’s second post, and B’s post.
   

   While I’ve heard some people say they don’t like this organizing system, I do. Sue me.

5. Search. This is one of the things that Google Reader doesn’t have. Technically you can search the web and “search for new content,” but there is no way currently to search the posts you’ve received. Seeing as Google is a search engine, you would think this would be a must-have, automatically-added feature for any of Google’s trinkets. This had better be added soon.

Google does well in all of those except the first and last. Google Reader is unacceptably slow, especially with loading pictures.

Its default organization of posts is set to “relevance.” But apparently it has no clue what “relevant” means, even with the considerable search history I’ve built up. Google has been trying to make Google more personalized and contain more relevance to each person (going back to when they created site-flavored search boxes), but it has been failing. I still don’t get much in the way of more relevant information! Maybe it’s just me.

Lastly, Google Reader allows you to tag the posts you view. Along with allowing you to tag your Search History, one could make an extremely compelling case for a Google: Del.icio.us style.

All in all, Google Reader is a good contender in the field of web-based RSS readers. Maybe I didn’t give you that impression, but I intended to. Perhaps, with some tweaking and some more desperately needed features (search!!) it will be an excellent contender. But for now, it is simply good.