Google Update: Another Winner from Google

Not a week passes by without someone prophetically saying, " Now, I too am going to start a blog." With so many blogs floating in the blogosphere it's hard to keep track. I have been a bonafide gadfly when it comes to the method I use for keeping track. First it was the sidebar of links, then I tried bloglines for some time. Then I switched to Thunderbird and have been quite happy and comfortable with it.

Like it has been for the past two years, Google always comes out with a better product than what is out there and I have to make the inevitable switch to the Google product - X-mail to Gmail; Mapquest to Google Maps;Pub Med to Google Scholar; Google Personalized is still not as good as Yahoo but is getting there. I like how it stores the history of your searches since who cares to remember anything these days.(Perhaps not something you might want your labmates or your advisor accessing!).

The latest from Google labs is Google Reader. The first thing that attracts your attention is the sliding window as you choose the subscription to view. While some stuff is mere fluff, the real advantage is the ease in finding the exact Feed URL or blog using Google's search engine. Incorporating some of the better features of Gmail such as labels & filters makes searching and reading through the million feeds more manageable; however, using the individual labels for the posts is a little complicated. Unlike other programs you can keep stepping back to access the previous posts. Once they sort out some of the issues after 'constructive criticism' from users like me, Google Reader will be another 'inevitable' switch.