Even though I work as a website developer until last week I had never bothered to set up an RSS reader. Now I’m not sure why I hadn’t bothered doing this, I was well aware of RSS feeds, I was even running 2 blogs both with RSS feeds. I think I was just stuck in my habit of reading blogs and news websites by navigating directly to the websites.

So I took the plunge and decided to try out Google Reader as Robert Scoble is always banging on about it, I thought about using the built in Firefox RSS reader but a some people were claiming its a bit rubbish.

I thought about getting some sort RSS plug-in for Thunderbird or Outlook but decided that it would be much cleaner to have a web-based solution; I get a bit fed up having to install and configure hundreds of applications everytime I want to use a new computer.

Anyway I’m very glad that I have started using an RSS reader. It helps me keep what I want to read organised, avoid adverts, and stops me opening a silly amount of tabs with articles that I’ll probably never get around to reading. I’m subscribed to about 20 blogs at the moment so am not using any of the more advanced features to keep things organised, I haven’t bothered learning any of the keyboard shortcuts yet either.

In conclusion I can’t really compare Google Reader to any other RSS readers as I haven’t used any others but I’d definitely recommend it to someone wanting to start reading RSS feeds.

Ooohh that RSS feed in the picture above looks really good (nosey people can click the image to see it full size and snoop on what I’ve been reading).

/* Pete Graham */