Tyler's Blog Death of Destiny

Google Reader

I don't know how many times I've blogged about Google Reader, but I know I still have readers that haven't tried it, and thus I'm blogging about it again.

Google Reader is an RSS/Atom aggregator. This is probably meaningless to a lot of my readers, so here's a very quick and simplified explanation. Websites that feature frequent updates are pretty much guaranteed to have something called an RSS (or Atom or another type of) feed. This RSS feed updates automatically whenever the website updates. What an RSS aggregator (like Google Reader) does is it keeps track of all your RSS feeds that you supply to it, and then it notifies you when they are updated.

At this point, some people are probably thinking that Google Reader is a waste of time because they can simply go to their websites and read it there. True (that you can simply read the website), but Google Reader helps you to save time in doing so. Instead of checking multiple sites--potentially several times a day--for updates, Google Reader enables you to check only one page where all updates can be viewed at the same time.

To give a more concrete use of how Google Reader is useful, I will now give a glimpse into how I use my Google Reader; hopefully it will demonstrate how this tool can be used to help make your internet browsing more productive.