Ben Reichelt’s Weblog

Update 2/6: It only lasted about a day and half and I’m back to Bloglines, I just couldn’t do it.

I decided this morning to give Google Reader another try. I tried it out in its first incarnation, when it really sucked, and I’ve been very happy with Bloglines for a long time now.

Two things that stand out right away that I don’t like:

• I can’t seem to find a gadget for my Google homepage that simply shows the number of new items. I don’t want to actually SEE the items, just a count.
• I also don’t see the number of people who subscribe to each feed, which I always thought was a cool feature in Bloglines.

One thing that I like right off the bat (after ~30 minutes), is the starring of items. I typically will “save” items in Bloglines that I want to read later, and those items always add to the unread count that I see on my Google homepage, which is misleading. When I star items in Google Reader they are marked as read and I can access the starred items on top, separate from the new items.

As long as theres some way to get the unread count on my Google homepage I’ll be a happy camper, we’ll see how it goes.