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Google Launches Google Reader at Web 2.0

Posted by Zonk on Fri Oct 07, 2005 02:54 PM
from the new-way-to-fly dept.
Businesses Google The Internet
Darren writes "Google Reader, an online RSS reader, is currently being demo'd at the Web 2.0 conference. It apparently 'makes it easier to keep up with your ever-expanding reading list of content from across the web.' Here's the tour about how it works."
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  • Interesting (Score:5, Funny)

    by rebug (520669) on Friday October 07 2005, @02:55PM (#13742177)
    But does it run on my old Web 1.0 system?

    I'm not upgrading until at least Web 2.1.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:4, Funny)

      by GweeDo (127172) on Friday October 07 2005, @03:06PM (#13742262) Homepage
      I recommend Web 3.11 for Workgroups. RSS only seems useful in a world where we can work together...
      • Has anyone seen the RSS "Web Clips" in your Gmail? I have 4 addresses, and only one has it. Upwards of 10 others with gmail don't have it. It is in the settings area on what feeds you want, and shows a non-intrusive scrolling line above the topmost email. Is this the same?
        • I doubt that Google's webclips is the same thing - webclips is hardly a convenient way to read your feeds.

          On that topic though, has anyone else noticed that webclips in Gmail is content-targeted? Because of this, anytime you look in your "Spam" folder you get recipes for "Spam & eggs"

    • I upgraded to Web 2.0 (Score:5, Funny)

      by kitzilla (266382) <paperfrog&gmail,com> on Friday October 07 2005, @03:53PM (#13742630) Homepage Journal
      I upgraded to Web 2.0, and -- wow -- the web really feels quite a bit snappier now!

      Windows open and close much faster. In my OS X dock, the Safari icon hardly has a chance to bounce more than once before the web loads right up. I don't know what Google has done "under the hood," but Web 2.0 is TONS better than Web 1.0.

      The only thing which doesn't work faster is Orkut, which chugs along and randomly barfs server errors just as always.

      Anyway: thanks, Google! That's twice you've Changed Everything (tm) this week!

  • It's active now, but man, is it slow!

  • It's slow. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Very. Very. Very slow. It imports nested OPML, however.
  • Dare we dream the impossible? Do my eyes see correctly? Slashdot has vanquished the mighty Google, who lies slain by our feet!

    This day shall live in infamy!

    • A sign of things to come? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GillBates0 (664202) on Friday October 07 2005, @03:09PM (#13742288) Homepage Journal
      While it's well known that Google has an ub3r loadsharing cluster of 10k+ machines, running a custom version of Linux, and probably many more mini-clusters distributed around the globe, I wonder how much more CPU load they can really take.

      I'm guessing their 10k cluster was probably underused when they started off with just basic search and indexing as their primary functions. Over time, they brainstormed over how else to put their massive resources to use. But now that they've released a large number of presumably *very* resource-intensive services, and are supporting an evergrowing number of users, I wonder if this Slashdotting is a sign of things to come.

      Some of their resource intensive services that come to mind (probably in a decreasing order of hogginess):

      1. Search/Indexing.
      2. Google Earth.
      3. Google Maps.
      4. Gmail/Google Groups/Blog
      5. Google Video (lower because of low usership currently).
      6. Google Images.
      7. Other assorted stuff.

      • Re:A sign of things to come? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Its a google labs beta, get over yourself. Google can easily grow their cluster, data pipe, etc.
        I have seen lots of these google labs things get slashdotted over the years.
        Haven't you heard, they are (twisting moustache, adjusting monacle) billionaires !!!!
        Maybe you don't realize just how rich they are right now.
      • Google Video (lower because of low usership currently).

        Probably because it doesn't seem to work, I've tried it from time to time and every single item I've tried to watch has always been unavailable.

    • Gmail is generally also very sluggish, they can't handle the bandwith there either i guess.

  • Easter egg (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    There's an easter egg, if you subscribe to Apple's Hot News RSS -feed.

  • RSS For The Great Unwashed? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Oynk (897161) on Friday October 07 2005, @03:10PM (#13742296) Homepage Journal
    I hope that this will help me to explain the value of RSS to my non-tech inclined friends and family. RSS has completely changed my web experience, again. When tabs arrived I had a simliar experience. I felt more empowered to manage my own web experience. Eventually I was auto-loadind 30 or more tabs. I was drowning again...until I caught on to RSS.

    RSS saves me time. I absorb less garbage stimuli (ads, images, meandering sites) and I can put my limitied time and energy into the things that truly interest me. I am a fan of RSS and cant wait to see if Google can serve it up simply to those who recoil at another intimidating internet acronym.

    O.

  • Yikes! (Score:2, Informative)

    by dep01 (730107)
    Geez. It almost crashed my browser >:(
  • If they can only integrate this with Gmail (which I'm sure they will), then that would be great.
    • It's already integrated. You can click on any feed and select gmail it. It will automatically connect on your gmail account so you can email the info.

  • orangoo.com feed reader (Score:3, Interesting)

    by amix3k (921245) on Friday October 07 2005, @03:14PM (#13742331)
    I have spend some time on my own little feed reader (check out Orangoo.com [orangoo.com]. And testing Googles feed reader, I really feel mine is better for actually reading feeds ;-)

    - It is very simple and made for reading feeds - - not finding them. It uses some Ajax to make the interface more dynamic.
    - It supports all versions of RSS + Atom.
    - It keeps the count on what items you have read
    - Bookmark items with del.icio.us
    - It's made with Python ;)
    - and more

    Try it out! Here is a screenshot: http://www.orangoo.com/static/screenshot.png [orangoo.com]
    • It didn't accept my email adress (j@xxx.com where xxx is a real domain). I had to use joe@xxx.com to actually register. And you might have gotten slashdotted, as all I could get after logging in was a 505... ;)
  • It'll probably have typical Google polish on it, but to be honest, those screenshots aren't really that great. I think I did a better job with my own online bookmarks manager/RSS reader [linkfinder.net], which is currently under development - moving away from remote scripting using iframes to the usage XMLHttpRequest, dontcha know.

    As far Google is concerned, I'm trying to play with the Reader currently, and not having a lot of luck (it's pretty slow.) Brings up an interesting concern about Ajax applications, however - w

  • Not load tested? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nzgeek (232346) on Friday October 07 2005, @03:17PM (#13742358) Homepage Journal
    My first impressions? It's excrucuatingly slow, counter intuitive, and just generally sucks the big one. I mean if the future of "Web 2.0 is an animated Loading... dialog, then I'll just stick with 1.0 thankyou very much.

    Seriously, it troubles me that in the rush to AJAXify everything, we seem to be going back to dialup days just when everything was starting to run smoothly on broadband. Sure I can load a 1000 element javascript array and do sorting and searching on the client side, but with today's connections and server hardware, what's the big deal with a page refresh?

    Google reader vs Bloglines illustrates this brilliantly.
    • you know, the one about how basically we all keep moving into larger domiciles in order to have enough room for our "stuff". I remember in the early days of the Web, a program manager I worked for complained about the extreme bloat of (then) current software. "Back in my day, I wrote a medical device reader that only took up 64k, and man did that thing haul ass!" Of course, when you have less room, you trim everything down to the bare essentials.

      As memory, storage, and bandwith increase, the available roo

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by HunterZ (20035) on Friday October 07 2005, @03:18PM (#13742366) Homepage Journal
    So when is Google going to release a web-based web browser?
    • So when is Google going to release a web-based web browser?

      That's called a proxy server.

      • That was so funny, I think I just blew an O-ring.

        I have been waiting for Google to do this since I use Gmail. I was about to put an RSS aggregator, my bookmarks and some other stuff on my server, but I will test this out first to see if it does the trick.

  • Another reason..... (Score:4, Funny)

    by 8127972 (73495) on Friday October 07 2005, @03:29PM (#13742450)
    ..... For Ballmer to throw a chair across the room.
  • The biggest downside is that there's no easy way to get an overview of everything, you can only see headlines from one feed at a time.

    The big advantage is that it does keep track of which headlines you've already read, like a newsreader or an email program.

    My current favorite feedreader is http://www.netvibes.com/ [netvibes.com] -- not to say that that can't use some slick features (keyboard shortcuts, f'rinstance), but I like the rearrangable panes, easy configuration, general flexibility.

    Overall, I'd say netvibes is a b
  • Too early to tell if this is a decent program. Right now it is slow as molasses. Can't tell whether it's the client side program or the server that's slow, or maybe a little of both.

    It's so slow now, I've got to wonder if their servers are down. But since it's beta that's perfectly acceptible.

  • So this is essentially a competitor to Bloglines, if I understand the service correctly?

  • Sucks (Score:4, Informative)

    by John Jorsett (171560) on Friday October 07 2005, @03:43PM (#13742562)
    The interface stinks. I much prefer BlogLines [bloglines.com].
  • The google link returns a 502.

    You slashdotted google! You bastards!
  • Works well on one feed, like my http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary / all_rss/ [google.com]">main dictionary entry and citation feed, but how will it handle the 1100 other feeds I subscribe to? Love the "blog this" option that interacts with Blogger (they I haven't used Blogger in years). Needs an OPML import and export. Pops up a window on links in the reader, no matter what, which some people might hate.
  • Error - come back later, or words to that effect.

    Hmmn ... there is a problem with the plans of Google and their pals. They all depend on fast, stable, 24/7 internet access. Maybe that's the reality in the fevered world of Silicon Valley but elsewhere the internet is not a particularly reliable beast. Google is now trading at $312 a share. I wonder if Google and it's followers aren't rather overestimating the internet's capabilities. Even one share seems an awful lot for yet another rss system, to add to
    • Google also caches every web site it finds and that's fine with most people here. Perhaps you missed Google's new motto, "All your web are belong to us."

    • You must be new here (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Wesley Felter (138342) <wesley@felter.org> on Friday October 07 2005, @03:15PM (#13742342) Homepage
      The whole point of RSS is so that aggregators can spindle, fold, mutilate, and (gasp) read it. If you want to force people to come to your site, just don't have RSS, or have a feed with only headlines.

      As for creative graphic design, the Web isn't print.
        • No, you're missing the point, if the website author only wanted Google to show the first few lines they would only put that much in the RSS feed...
        • In that case start.com isn't respecting the RSS data...

          The idea with RSS is to give the author the flexibility to configure how much or how little an RSS reader should display their feeds. If start.com decide to cripple the feed info, that's their problem and nothing I think readers should strive for.
    • Um, that's the whole point of online RSS readers. If a blog doesn't want you to read their news without visiting their site, then they shouldn't publish an RSS feed. The caching is actually a nice benefit as it decreases the number of repeated hits to your feed. bloglines [bloglines.com] has been doing this for a while. If a site wants to publish a feed but also wants advertising revenue they can insert ads in their feed or only publish a short portion of the entry in the feed so that someone has to go to the site to s

    • If Google is caching all the blogs locally so that readers never have to visit a blog site, Google is robbing the bloggers and other site's off their advertising revenue, not to mention the fact that Google is robbing the readers off the experience of seeing good creative graphic design of other sites by showing content in its crappy looking interface.

      Boo Hoo. Squid caches things locally too. Your browser caches things locally and a second user might never actually visit the site. Pop-up blockers and bro

    • If a site offers an RSS feed and Google reads it, how is that a copyright violation? Nobody is forcing you to host RSS, and you can't hold anyone liable just because they use a service you offer.
    • So put ads in your article, that way they come out with the feed.
    • Sorry, Drudge's setup stinks. I love reading his site, but he has a feed at drudgereportarchives.com that is days late and sometimes republishes all its articles again. I would rather let this be handled someone who had an inkling of RSS.

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