There''s this Greasemonkey script I just found out about, and wish I knew about it all along! I''ve been an avid user of
Google Reader
in the past, but found it too much effort to keep logging in and out of
Reader. Now, I have the perfect feature to help me keep up with feeds!
You''ll need to install Greasemonkey before you can use this.This script adds
a ''Feeds'' link to your Gmail inbox, and clicking on it shows you the
feeds you subscribed for right ininside your Gmail account! It saves me
a lot of time from logging in and out of Reader, and from excessive
scrolling thro feeds in Google Reader.This should be a feature in Gmail, but then there''d be hardly a need to have a separate Google Reader account.The new version of Reader has been out there long enough (and is now
stable enough) that I have some time to catch my breath and make this
post (my post-launch post
last year came only a couple of days after the big announcement). I''ve
jotted down some of my thoughts from the past few weeks, continuity
will not be high.
There were some hints that something big was coming. Chris''s Twitter updates were sounding rather intense. Someone in the discussion group inferred
from my lack of posts that a major update was imminent (or that I
stopped caring - never!). We even invited some bloggers for a sneak
peek at the new Reader* but they were nice and respected their embargo.
Reader is in Google Labs, and that puts it in the "throw it against
the wall and see what sticks"
product family. I''m glad that people seem
to have realized
that this "throwing" and "seeing" are less passive than they sound. To
stretch this metaphor further, if the spaghetti starts to slide off,
engineers (and UI designers, and product managers, and others) will
study the problem and figure out how to increase its coefficient of
friction. Usually the
changes are more subtle (witness the myriad of
tweaks that have been done to the Google Video homepage) which is
perhaps why there is this perception that no post-launch changes are
made.