Google Reader on iPhone
I have to admit, I’m a pretty recent convert to RSS readers. I really like the physical action of visiting someones page and viewing their content through the lens of the design of their site. However, this takes time. Since I started to follow more people and more blogs it seems to take a lot of it. As I continue to grow and learn I’ve managed to find some great resources in the blogging world. However, it’s become less and less efficient to physically visit each site. Also, on occasion a really valuable post has slipped through the cracks during a time I wasn’t able to visit the sites of various authors.
Enter the RSS reader. A way of subscribing to people’s blogs that sends out their posts via feeds into your “reader”. In your reader the posts collect in something very much like an inbox to be read, without the visual skin of the authors website. Certainly not as visually attractive but definitely far mor efficient.
If you only have a few favourite blogs then an RSS reader may not be for you, but if you track with many blogs and currently don’t use a reader I would highly suggest trying it.
I settled on Google’s Reader, since it integrates into the rest of my Google accounts pretty seamlessly. I had been trying to find a handy iPhone app through Apple’s App Store that would sync with my Google Reader account, when I discovered something pretty sweet though my settings page. Google Reader actually has a mobile site where you can view and read your various feeds. It’s very user friendly and quite handy for browsing. Way better than any free dedicated RSS app I could find. Even better, thanks to Apple’s iPhone OS software, you can add a link to your homescreen that makes the web page function very much like an app. It’s the same trick Google used for Wave (see a few posts back).
Here’s a pic of my iPhone home screen:
See on the third row from the top on the far right? That’s my reader. Even though it looks like an app it actually is just a link to the mobile site. What’s very cool is that Google has engineered a sweet custom icon to make it blend in with most other apps, so not only does it function great, but it looks fantastic as well. Check out the same thing they did with Google Wave in my home row. Very cool.
Here’s an peek inside what Google reader’s mobile site looks like on the iPhone when you tap on the Reader icon:
Easy, neat, and efficient. Even though it’s really opening up in Safari it still does exactly what I need it to do. And it’s super great to have easy access right from my home screen. Nice work Google!
