If your Internet habits are anything like mine, there are a lot of web sites you check up on regularly.  I’d tried a few RSS readers before, but didn’t like having to run yet another program, or I didn’t care for the way it worked in the browser if it was integrated and finally just ignored them.  Instead I used tabbed browsing and “groups” of links.  I’d have a folder of, say, “Blogs” and I’d use my browser’s “Open all links” function to open each blog in its own tab.  This got slow, of course…

Ok, I linked to the Wikipedia on RSS, but here’s a summary:  RSS is a way to offer a “feed” of the posts on a site, independent of layout and using a standardized presentation so it can be viewed by any “reader”.  Many RSS feeds, such as the one on my blog (at this time, anyway) are simply “snippets” of each post, with the URL on how to read the full article.  Others have all the information.

I started seeing a few news articles on Digg about Google Reader‘s new look/features and finally decided to check it out.  Wow, I wish I’d started using it earlier.  What an incredible, easy-to-use, and most of all helpful web site!

All you have to do is go to http://reader.google.com/, log in with your Gmail account (sign up for one if you don’t have it — Gmail is the best way to deal with Email right now, hands-down) and start adding site feeds.

My Google Reader page, using the Google Chrome Browser

So there’s my Google reader.  Boldfaced subscriptions are those with new entries, I can click them individually to see them, or click “All Items” which I currently have to set “New Items Only”.

And because it uses AJAX (a technology that lets web pages update with Javascript without the entire page being reloaded — you see it everywhere these days) you can just keep the site open in a tab and it’ll automatically check for updates all day.

Here’s where it’s vastly superior to other feed readers I’ve tried:  Because it’s site-based rather than program of browser-based, I can check on the sites I’m following from anywhere.  I can check it at home on my main desktop, or while on the couch watching TV, or even on my iPod Touch through its Safari web browser.  Google Reader recognizes the iPod and formats itself a little more pleasantly for such a small screen.

I’ll never have to load up 20 tabs at a time again!  If you read even a few sites regularly, you really owe it to yourself to try out Google Reader!