How Google Reader can help save lives

September 12, 2007

Imagine this, you’re talking to your friend, and you start telling them about this great post which you just read. “I’ll email you a link” is what you tell them, “I subscribe to the RSS feed“. Feeling a little superior, since you are now a purveyor of fine knowledge, you go along your merry way.

It isn’t until later, when you finally get to a computer, that you realize you didn’t star or bookmark that post. How will you ever find it? How will you ever know that it was a Port 16 article?

Now your friend’s life will remain a hollow shell of an existence. The light of knowledge and wisdom will never shine it’s humorous, witty style of illumination into his dark part of the universe.

No need to worry, there’s still hope for your poor, unfortunate friend. Google has introduced a search feature in Google Reader! Not only can you search your feeds, but you can search individual folders (tags). Now you can find that post in a matter of seconds. Your superior feeling doesn’t have to fade like the output of a cheap inkjet.

Google also increased the number of unread posts that Reader will report as being unread. Previously it reported up to 100 unread feed items, after which it would display “100+”. Was it 101 unread posts, 200? There was no way to know, but now it reports up to 1000!

That little feature wasn’t mentioned in the post, but I tend to subscribe to a whole lot more feeds than I have any reasonable expectation of reading. Is it 1001 unread posts, 2000? I don’t know. Maybe they can bump it up to 10,000. I would have a chance then.

References:

Find a needle in a feedstack with Google Reader - Official Google Blog

Also on Port 16:

Posted in RSS, Google Reader, Google, Internet