Fullscreen and more!

8/26/2010 04:06:00 PM

Posted by Arif Siddiquee, Software Engineer

As Google Reader is all about reading, we thought we should give our users a chance to maximize their screen space whenever possible... thus fullscreen mode was born. You can toggle the fullscreen mode through the 'f' key. Additionally, you can use 'shift + u' to show and hide the navigation panel so you can easily change what you're reading without leaving fullscreen mode.

Eagle-eyed viewers might have also noticed we've added a new category to the trends page: clicked trends - now you can see which sources you click on the most.
And finally, something many of you have asked for before...we now show you your lifetime read item count. That's right. Every. Single.* Item.**

*Only things you've scrolled by, or clicked on - doesn't count mark all as read.
**Okay, that's not quite accurate - once you hit around 300K (which we know some of you are already over) we stop counting for performance reasons. Consider that "beating the game".

Folder and tag renaming

6/01/2010 04:39:00 PM

Posted by Wiktor Gworek, 20% task force (Krakow, Poland)

Last year we announced that we wanted to hear your wish list for features in Google Reader, and one of most highly requested features was the ability to rename folders and tags. Today we are rolling out this feature with a little bit of Polish help from Krakow.

You can rename folders and tags on the settings page:

And you can also edit these names right from the contextual menu in your subscription list.

Also, as we announced last week, today we’ve disabled offline access through Gears, and phased out support for older browsers.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please head over to our help forums, or send us a message on Twitter.

Spring Cleaning: Comments, offline, and older browser support

5/24/2010 02:09:00 PM

Posted by Mihai Parparita, Software Engineer

Springtime is a great opportunity to clean up, take care of loose ends, and generally spruce things up. Since we still have a few weeks of spring left, the Reader team is taking this opportunity to clean things up a bit.

Simplifying comments

Ever since we launched support for comments on shared items, one of the most frequent points of confusion has been "who can comment on my shared items?" (or rather, "why can't I comment on my friends' shared items?"). Up until now, someone had to be in a designated sharing group to be able to comment on a post, even if you were sharing publicly. To make things a lot simpler, we've made it so that if you can see a shared item, you can comment on it.

For those of you who are sharing publicly, the next time you log in to Reader you'll get a choice between continuing to share publicly and allowing anyone to comment on your shared items, or switching to protected sharing:

Nothing will change for users who already had their shared items protected, since visibility and commenting for their shared items was already consistent. Keep in mind that you can always update who can view and comment on your shared items on the sharing settings page.

Phasing out support for older browsers

Reader is joining Docs (and many other sites) in removing support for older browsers, notably Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1.0 and 2.0, Safari 2.0 and 3.0, and Chrome 1.0, 2.0. and 3.0. Reader is a cutting edge web application, and this will allow us to spend our time improving Reader instead of fixing issues with antiquated browsers. Starting on June 1, users of older browsers will begin to see a notification encouraging them to upgrade to any of Reader’s supported browsers.

Discontinuing offline access via Gears

We launched offline support three years ago, but only a minority of Reader users actively use it today. Because supporting offline access requires a large ongoing engineering effort, and because Gears itself is being surpassed by HTML5, we've decided to remove offline support in Reader starting on June 1.

Of course, we know that offline access is important to some of you, and with the wide range of third party clients that sync with Google Reader, you don’t need to give it up. Depending on your operating system, we recommend taking a look at:

• NetNewsWire (Mac OS X)
• FeedDemon (Windows)
• Liferea (Linux)

Each of these alternatives will sync your subscriptions and read state with Reader, and continue to provide offline access to your feeds. For more information, please see our help center.

We realize that removing features and support is not easy, but with this spring cleaning done, we've laid the groundwork for more Reader improvements down the line. We apologize for any inconvenience, and if you have any questions please head over to our forum, or message us on Twitter.

A little bit of polish

5/07/2010 12:34:00 PM

Posted by Mihai Parparita, Software Engineer

Jak wielokrotnie robiliśmy w przeszłości, ekipa Google Reader poświęciła czas pomiędzy wypuszczaniem wiekszych projektów na pracę nad małymi usprawnieniami i naprawę istniejących błędów.

Oh wait, not that kind of Polish, this kind of polish.

As we've often done in the past, the Reader team has taken the time between major releases to work on small features and bug fixes. Here's a round-up of the changes we've made over the past month:

We've added support for the HTML5 <video> and <audio> tags, so that when you come across an awesome video you can share it in such a way that your mobile device-using friends can see it too.

We realize that our recommended items may not always hit the spot (though who wouldn't like a water slide in their house). There is now a "Not interested" link at the bottom of recommended items, so that you can both hide that item and provide signals to our algorithms about the kinds of things you like and dislike.

Reader is the kind of application that people keep open in a tab all day. While it's flattering that our users are so dedicated, we want to make sure that they don't miss out on any new features and bug fixes that we release. We've therefore added a small banner that appears whenever we release a new version. If you're in the middle of something, you can ignore it (and it'll go away for a while), but if not, newest and shinier things are just a click away. Incidentally, today we built the 500th version of Reader; over the 5 years that we've worked on Reader, that works out to almost two builds a week.

A few improvements to Reader Play: When you hit space (or shift-space), you're now automatically moved between posts, and for posts with multiple images, cycled through each image. We've also added made Play more configurable by letting you change the URL used:

• If you add a welcome=0 query parameter, the welcome screen is skipped, even for new and signed-out users.
• An autoplay=1 query parameter can be used to start moving through posts automatically.
• A #feed/<URL> fragment allows you to display a specific feed.

You can combine all these to make automatically playing slideshows of your favorite photoblogs.

Finally, we've done a few other small things, like the Home view loading faster, and the Send to functionality being less susceptible to being stymied by popup blockers when used with services such as Twitter.

The way we prioritized these tweaks and fixes was based on forum and Twitter feedback, so please keep it coming.

A veritable boatload of read items

4/09/2010 12:10:00 PM

Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager

Wow. Who knew your hunger for points and badges was so insatiable? While ReaderAdvantage™ was a joke, we actually ordered and are distributing Reader badges as part of the joke. Unfortunately, so many people ordered them that we ran through our stockpile a mere 27 minutes after we announced the program. Which got us to thinking... just how much do our users read?

A few stats about the badge submissions:

• 13% of people who requested a badge ended up way over our “Totally Sweet” threshold of 314,159 items read...
• 25% of you were Platinum (133,700 read items or more).
• Even more amazing, four people had read over one million lifetime items.
• One person had read more than two million items. (Holy cow.)

For comparison, the average Reader user reads about 105 items a day, which isn’t bad unless you want to get to the Totally Sweet level of over 314,159 lifetime read items - at that rate it’s going to take you over 8 years to get there. And if you’re aiming to join the (recently founded) One Million Club, we’re talking over 26 years. So, uh, time to start reading?

While we were at it, we took a look at what users are starring, sharing, and liking the most. While many of the most-starred items are reference posts, collections of tips, or tutorials from our friends over at Lifehacker, the most starred item lately is actually this hilarious video. That same video also shows up near the top of the latest and most liked or shared items, along with a collection of interesting images, designs, and bizarrely useless machines. It’s clear that the crowd is onto something here, so if you’re not getting these items in your current feeds, maybe it’s time to check out Reader Play or the Recommended items section in Reader.

P.S. We’re shipping the badges soon. Really.

Google Reader gives back

4/01/2010 08:16:00 AM

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

At the recent SXSW conference, we handed out free Google Reader T-shirts to people based on how many Reader items they'd ever read... in their whole life. We knew that free shirts would be a hit, but we learned something much more important: a lot of people have read a lot of items. (At an average of thirty seconds per item, the most prolific readers had spent more than 180 full days of their lives perusing stuff on Reader — what Blogger gives, Reader takes away)

After the conference, several of us felt like shirts didn't seem like enough of a reward for all the valuable hours people have spent trolling through so many feeds. One thing led to another, we did a few calculations, drank a few too many cups of coffee, and today we're happy to announce Google Reader's first rewards program: ReaderAdvantage™.

The ReaderAdvantage™ program is simple. You get one point for each item you read. The more you read, the more you get. Then you can trade in your points for cool stuff. And because we believe in a little friendly competition, there are four levels of ReaderAdvantage™ status:

• Novice: 999 points
• Gold: 25,000 points
• Platinum: 133,700 points
• Totally Sweet: 314,159 points

We considered inventing a secret ReaderAdvantage™ handshake, but instead we created embroidered badges to ensure that members can easily identify their compatriots.

If you use Google Reader, there's no reason not to join. Visit the ReaderAdvantage™ site to read all the details and enroll today. As always, please send us your thoughts and feedback in our forum or on Twitter.

More Reader features in your pocket

3/17/2010 12:04:00 PM

Posted by Arif Siddiquee, Software Engineer

The more eagle-eyed Reader users have noticed a few tweaks being made to Reader's mobile interface over the past few days:

• We've brought over a few more features from the desktop version of Reader: magic ranking and search. Both can be found in the option drop-down menu.
• For better consistency with the desktop version, we've made the titles of items be links to the original page
• The top of each item now has "collapse" and "next item" links. This way there's always a consistent space for your thumb to hit so you can advance to the next item.

Since we know the best mobile content is short and sweet, we're going to leave you with that. Feel free to get in touch with us on Twitter or on our help group with feedback on these changes.

​And now for something completely different

3/10/2010 01:13:00 PM

Posted by Garrett Wu, Software Engineer

Since I've been working on Google Reader, I've told a lot of my friends about how great it is. And while some of them try Reader and find it really useful, many of them aren’t interested in taking the time to get Reader set up. That’s why today, I’m happy to announce an experimental product from the Google Reader team that makes the best stuff in Reader more accessible for everyone, while giving Reader users a new way to view their feeds. It’s called Google Reader Play, and it’s a new way to browse interesting stuff on the web that’s easy to use and personalized to the things you like. Best of all, there’s no set-up required: visit google.com/reader/play to give it a try.

In Google Reader Play, items are presented one at a time, and each item is big and full-screen. After you've read an item, just click the next arrow to move to the next one, or click any item on the filmstrip below to fast-forward. Of course, you can click the title or image of any item to go to the original version. And since so much of the good stuff online is visual, we automatically enlarge images and auto-play videos full-screen.

Reader Play adapts to your tastes -- as you browse, you can let us know which stuff you enjoy by clicking the "like" button, and we'll use that info to show you more items we think you'll like. If you want, you can also choose categories, and we'll personalize your stream to only show you stuff from those categories. And you don't even need a Google account to use Reader Play. Of course, if you want to star, like, or share items, we'll ask you to sign in to your Google account. Since Reader and Reader Play share the same infrastructure, any actions you take in one will be reflected in the other.

You might be wondering where we find all the awesome stuff in Reader Play. It uses the same technology as the Recommended Items feed in Reader to identify and aggregate the most interesting items on the web. If you sign in, Reader Play will also be personalized with items that people you’re following have shared in Google Reader, and items similar to ones you’ve previously liked, starred, or shared.

Since Reader Play is an experiment, it’s launching in Google Labs for now. To be clear, Reader Play isn't intended to replace Google Reader: both Google Reader and Reader Play are about finding and reading interesting stuff online. In essense, Reader Play is a different view of Reader. It's designed to be a fun and easy way to browse interesting items, while Reader is a highly customizable way to organize your feeds, keep track of what you've read, and much more. In Reader, you can switch to this view by clicking "View in Reader Play" from the feed settings menu.

Try Reader Play today and let us know what you think. Send us feedback in our forum or on Twitter, and check out our help article for more info.

May we recommend...

2/18/2010 05:41:00 PM

Posted by Laurence Gonsalves, Software Engineer ​

Long time readers of our blog will note that we occasionally throw in links to crazy, interesting, and fun items in our posts. You may be wondering, “How can I find such interesting content to share?” Today we’re launching two new features that are designed to help you do just that:

• Recommended items get personal - When we launched Popular items many of you wanted to see even more personalized recommendations. With the latest round of improvements, we’ve started inserting items selected just for you inside the Recommended items section. This is great if you’ve got interests that are less mainstream. If you love Lego robots, for example, then you should start to notice more of them in your Recommended items.

  

• Even more related feeds - If you’ve ever discovered a cool blog on, say, underwater basket-weaving and wanted to find more on the same topic, we’ve added a few easy ways to find related feeds. Hover over any of your subscriptions, click the menu and check out “More like this...” to see related feeds.

  

  We’ll also show you related feeds when looking at the preview of any feed.

  

We hope these new features will help you find more content that interests you, whether that’s LOLcats or cooking.

As always, feel free to come visit our help forums or Twitter to leave us some feedback.

Readers: Get your Buzz on

2/09/2010 11:02:00 AM

Posted by Mihai Parparita, Software Engineer

We know that many people like Reader because it makes it so easy to share interesting stuff with a wide group of friends. That's why, over the past year, we've added a number of features to help you share the content you find most interesting: comments, following, people search, liking, and "send to."

However, even with all these great features, sharing has been mostly limited to the subset of your friends who use Google Reader. While many people use Reader, we know that even more use Gmail. That's why today, we're thrilled to announce that with the launch of Google Buzz, the awesome items you share in Reader can also be shared with all your friends who use Gmail with Google Buzz.

A shared item in Reader (background) and Buzz (foreground)

Getting started with Google Buzz is easy. Just head over to Gmail and you'll be able to link up your Google Reader account with just a few clicks. Then, anything you share in Reader will automatically be posted to Buzz. Comments are even shared between both products, so you can view and participate in the conversation wherever you'd prefer.

And don't worry, you don't have another list of friends or followers to manage. The people you follow in Reader are the same people you follow in Buzz – those you've already chosen to follow in Reader, plus the people you email and chat with the most in Gmail.

Check out the video below, explaining everything you can do with Google Buzz!

Head to our help center for more details about the Buzz integration in Reader, or leave us feedback in our forum, on Twitter or even using Buzz itself.

P.S. Keep in mind that Google Buzz is rolling out gradually, it might be a few days before you get it for your account.

Follow changes to any website

1/25/2010 02:01:00 PM

At Google we're always looking for ways to take advantage of work being done in other parts of the organization. So when a team approached us with a way to follow changes from websites without feeds, we jumped at the opportunity. Post by Liza Ma, Product Manager.

Feeds make it easy to follow updates to all kinds of webpages, from blogs to news sites to Craigslist queries, but unfortunately not all pages on the web have feeds. Today we're rolling out a change in Google Reader that lets you create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don't have their own feed.

These custom feeds are most useful if you want to be alerted whenever a specific page has been updated. For example, if you wanted to follow Google.org's latest products, just type "http://www.google.org/products.html" into Reader's "Add a subscription" field. Click "create a feed", and Reader will periodically visit the page and publish any significant changes it finds as items in a custom feed created just for that page.

Here are some more example feeds for sites without feeds that you could follow:

• Macy's - special offers [view in Reader]
• NYU Computer Science homepage [view in Reader]
• Zillow.com homepage [view in Reader]

We provide short snippets of page changes to help you quickly decide if the page is worth revisiting and we're working on improving the quality of these snippets. If you don't want Google to crawl or create feeds for a specific site, site owners can opt-out.

If you have a feed-less page you've been dying to follow, sign in to Google Reader and try it out for yourself. As always, if you have any feedback, please visit our official help forums or our Twitter account.

​A new year, new mobile features, and more!

1/05/2010 02:58:00 PM

Posted by Arif Siddiquee, Software Engineer ​

We know that many of you like to take Reader with you wherever you go, so today we are updating our mobile interface by adding a few new features along with a new streamlined look.

New mobile features include support for "liking", tagging, and sorting feeds by oldest/newest. These are all features that were previously only available on the web interface, and we’ve worked to get them into the mobile version as quickly as possible.

As far as streamlining goes, we’ve made a few improvements to give you more features with less clutter. First, we redesigned the bottom action bar to include a “More” link, revealing additional options (with the most common actions selected by default).

We’ve also updated the main header to be consistent with other Google mobile applications, specifically Gmail, Calendar, and Latitude. And we’ve added an option drop-down in place of the old secondary tool bar, to give you a little more space for your feed items. We hope this also reduces those accidental “mark as read” accidents that happen on occasion.

On Reader's web interface, we've made it easier to find people who are sharing stuff similar to you. Take a peek at the new people recommendations (in the “Recomended sources” section on the web interface) to find folks with shared items we think you’ll enjoy. It's a nifty way to discover new feeds and people that you might not have discovered otherwise.

As always, we listen to your feedback and use it to improve Reader. If there are specific features you miss on the mobile version of Google Reader, head over to our Product Ideas page and leave us a note. We love all kinds of feedback through our official help forums and our Twitter account.

Take your Reader wherever Google Chrome goes

12/08/2009 09:10:00 AM

Posted by Mihai Parparita, Software Engineer

The Google Chrome team is launching beta support for extensions today, and we thought we'd take a shot at writing a Reader extension. The Google Reader Notifier displays the number of unread items in your Reader account in Google Chrome's toolbar. When clicked, the toolbar icon displays a popup preview of the latest items in your account. This way, you can keep an eye on your Reader account wherever on the web you are.

Let us know how you like the extension (and what other features you'd like to see in it) by adding a review on its page in the extension gallery.

Note that extensions are currently available only for the beta channel of Google Chrome for Windows and Linux, so you'll want to make sure you're running one of those browsers before you install the extension.

Reader users may want to try the RSS subscription extension too. It adds previewing and one-click subscribe support for any RSS or Atom feed that you happen to come across. And feel free to browse or search for other handy extensions.

And if you're a developer itching to write your own extension, you'll want to check out the extensive documentation and code samples.

Let your subscriptions' personality come through

11/24/2009 10:13:00 AM

Posted by Mihai Parparita, Software Engineer

We recently asked you for your ideas (and votes) on how to make Reader better. One of the more popular suggestions was adding favicon support for subscriptions, so today we're introducing just that (thanks to 20%-er Shreyas Desai).

We realize that not everyone wants their subscription list to turn into a multi-colored extravaganza, so we've made it into a setting that you can access from your subscriptions menu.

Be on the lookout for more ideas being implemented, and feel free to let us know how you like this feature on Twitter or in our help forum.

Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking

10/22/2009 03:29:00 PM

Posted by Beverly Yang, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog)

Today, we're launching two changes to Google Reader to help you discover more interesting content faster. Just as the launch of Personalized Search improved search results based on your search history, these changes use your Reader Trends to improve your reading experience.

• Explore section - We're always trying to help you discover new stuff in Reader, and today we're introducing "Popular items" and "Recommended sources", two ways to find interesting content from all over the Internet. We use algorithms to find top-rising images, videos and pages from anywhere (not just your subscriptions), collect them in the new Popular items section and order them by what we think you'll like best. Now you don't have to be embarrassed about missing that hilarious video everyone is talking about — it should show up in your "Popular items" feed automatically. And to make it easier to find interesting feeds, we're moving recommendations into the new Explore section and giving it a new name — "Recommended sources." Like always, it uses your Reader Trends and Web History (if you're opted into Web History) to generate a list of feeds we think you might like.

  

• Personalized ranking - Only have a 10 minute coffee break and want to see the best items first? All feeds now have a new sort option called "magic" that re-orders items in the feed based on your personal usage, and overall activity in Reader, instead of default chronological order. Click "Sort by magic" under the "Feed settings" menu of your feed (or folder) to switch to personalized ranking. Unlike the old "auto" ranking, this new ranking is personalized for you, and gets better with time as we learn what you like best — the more you "like" and "share" stuff, the better your magic sort will be. Give it a try on a high-volume feed folder or All items and see for yourself!

  

The goal of personalization at Google remains the same as ever: to help you find the best content on the web. We hope these new features help you do just that — go Explore for yourself.

Finally, we'd love to hear your feedback — share your thoughts on our help group, Twitter or the Reader section of Get Satisfaction, a third party support community.

Calling All Ideas!

9/22/2009 10:21:00 AM

Posted by Nick Santaniello, Consumer Operations

The Google Reader team often looks to you, our users, for feedback on the changes we've implemented as well as for help determining our priorities for the future. In that spirit, we're excited to announce the launch of Product Ideas for Google Reader: a tool that allows you to submit your best ideas directly to the Google Reader team and to other Google Reader users.

Have you ever had an idea that would make Google Reader better, more efficient, or just more fun to use? Using Product Ideas, you can submit your idea as well as read suggestions from other users - and best of all, you can vote on the ideas submitted and browse the highest-ranked ideas. We'll get a chance to see and respond directly to the ideas that you, our users, are most excited about.

In addition to submitting product ideas, you can also post links to your own favorite custom bundles and Send To links as well as browse links submitted by others. Using Product Ideas, you'll easily be able to see (and subscribe to!) the highest rated bundles and Send To links as well as expose your own content to a whole new group of Reader users just like you.

Give it a try! Submit some suggestions and your favorite bundles and Send To links and, as always, let us know what you think.

Looking for great stuff to read?

8/25/2009 01:27:00 PM

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

Where do Arianna Huffington and Thomas Friedman go to get different perspectives on the news? Which economics sites does Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman read? What sites and blogs do the editors of Lifehacker, Boing Boing and Kottke read?

These questions have always interested us, so we decided to approach leaders across a variety of fields and ask them what they read online. We got lots of great responses, which we've collected into our second edition of Power Readers. In this edition, we've expanded from Power Readers in Politics to include journalists, techies, fashion critics, foodies, and more. We hope this will be a good place for you to find more great things to read, whether you're new to Google Reader or already have an extensive reading list. Visit www.google.com/powerreaders to explore and subscribe to any of the participants' reading lists, or to any individual sites and blogs they recommend.

All these reading lists were built using Reader's new custom bundles, and we encourage you to create and share your own reading lists for your areas of expertise.

A big thanks to all of our contributors:

News: Thomas Friedman (New York Times), Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Post), Michelle Malkin (Hot Air), Paul Krugman (New York Times), Patrick Ruffini (The Next Right), Nicholas Kristof (New York Times), John Dickerson (Slate), Dexter Filkins (New York Times), Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos), Charles Blow (New York Times)
Tech and web: Chris Anderson (Wired), Adam Pash (Lifehacker), Mark Frauenfelder (Boing Boing), Alex Papadimoulis (The Daily WTF), Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land), Jason Kottke (Kottke.org), Annalee Newitz (io9), Meaghan O’Neill (Treehugger), Ben Popken (The Consumerist)
Food and health: Mark Bittman (New York Times), Béatrice Peltre (La Tartine Gourmande), Faith Durand (Apartment Therapy: The Kitchn), Tara Parker-Pope (New York Times)
Trends and fashion: Abby Gardner (Fashionista), Cathy Horyn (New York Times), Danielle de Lange (The Style Files), Carrie Leber (Bloomacious)

We'd love to hear your feedback – please head over to our help group, Twitter, or Get Satisfaction.

A flurry of features for feed readers

8/12/2009 05:00:00 PM

Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager

Since our last big launch, we've been thinking about ways to help our users better share, discover, and consume content in Reader. Today, I'm happy to announce several new features that we hope will further improve the way you use Reader.

Send to...
We've made it easier to share posts you like to Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, and more, with our new "Send to" feature. (Incidentally, Blogger is celebrating its tenth birthday this month, and we're hoping our friends there will like this little birthday present.)
Just head over to the settings page, and enable the services you want to use. If your favorite service isn't listed (and you're feeling extra geeky), you can create your own "Send to" link with a URL template.

To share an item on one of your sites, simply click the "Send to" button and choose your service. If you're into keyboard shortcuts, "shift-t" will do the same.

Feeds from people you follow
When we added following, we tried to make it easier to find and follow people who share similar interests. Now we've gone even further, and made it possible for you to subscribe directly to the blogs, photos, or Twitter updates that anyone you're following has included on their Google profile.

To quickly subscribe to these sites, click the "From people you follow" tab on the "Browse for stuff" page.

More control for mark all as read
We know people can be overwhelmed by too many unread items, and sometimes only want to see recent posts. The "Mark all as read" button now has a menu that lets you choose to only mark items as read if they're older than your specified time frame. A tip of the hat to Nick Bradbury who pioneered this "panic button" feature.

Finally, a few small tweaks in this release:

• When you expand an item in comment view, you now get the full set of actions, enabling you to share, like, and star items without leaving comment view.
• We added a "Feeds" start-page option for the iPhone/Android/Pre mobile interface, so you can see a list of your subscriptions when you sign in.
• There is now an option to show notes when embedding your shared items on other pages as clips.

As always, if you have feedback, please head over to our help group, Twitter, or Get Satisfaction.

PubSubHubbub support for Reader shared items

8/05/2009 02:13:00 PM

Posted by Mihai Parparita, Software Engineer

Speed is very important at Google, and the Reader team is no exception. One way in which we take speed into account is to try to make consumption of feeds be as efficient as possible. We also want to make it as fast (and as easy) as possible to interact with your Reader data on the rest of the web.

We're therefore happy to announce that Reader has begun adoption of the PubSubHubbub protocol, beginning with the publishing of our shared items. All shared item pages have feeds, and now all of those feeds will ping a hub (and there's a <link rel="hub" .../> element in them). This means that if you (as a web app developer) would like to more efficiently and quickly monitor Reader shares, you just have to subscribe at the hub to be notified of changes in real-time. If you want to learn more about PubSubHubbub and how it works, see the site and protocol definition.

One place that takes advantage of this pinging is FriendFeed. This means if you have added your shared items to your FriendFeed account, you and your friends will see them there within a few seconds the "Share" link being pressed in Reader (special thanks to FriendFeeder Benjamin Golub for making sure the experience was as smooth as possible). You can see this in action in FriendFeed's search results and in the screencast below:

Adding PubSubHubbub support was a 20% project between Brad Fitzpatrick, Brett Slatkin, and myself, each of us working in our spare time over the past couple of weeks. Adding PubSubHubbub to your application is definitely a low-effort but high-payoff way of making the Web faster and more efficient. And if you have any questions or feedback about PubSubHubbub support, you can reach us on our help group, Twitter or Get Satisfaction.

A hearty welcome to NewsGator users

7/30/2009 12:30:00 PM

Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager

A little while back, our friends over at NewsGator told us that lots of people who use their client RSS readers like FeedDemon and NetNewsWire had been asking for the ability to synchronize with Google Reader, since maintaining two separate subscription lists was a hassle. Today, we're happy to report that we've worked with NewsGator to make this possible, and new versions of their client readers released today will use Google Reader as the synchronization backend. If you use one of these applications, check out NewsGator's instructions and FAQ on transitioning your subscriptions.

Now that Google Reader can be used as the online companion to NewsGator's client applications, they've decided to discontinue consumer use of NewsGator Online, their free web-based RSS reader, at the end of August. If you've been using this service, you'll need to transition your subscriptions to Google Reader. To do this, all you need to is a Google account (you already have one if you use Gmail), and here's a video to help you get started. To those of you who have been waiting for this integration and to those of you who are using Reader for the first time, welcome!

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback in our help group, Twitter or Get Satisfaction.