When I switch on the computer in the morning there are a couple of things that I look at right away. First I check my email, then I fire up Tweetie to see what’s going on with Twitter. I use iTunes to see if there are any new podcasts for me to listen to, and then it’s time to read the news.
My news comes to me in one way, Google Reader. Aside from Gmail, Google’s online RSS reader has to be my favourite product from the Silicon Valley giant. For those of you who haven’t come across it yet, Google Reader allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds much like you can with Safari or Firefox, only it’s online. That means that wherever I am I can read the news.
Most things come with some form of RSS reader these days especially the latest batch of smart-phones. The only disadvantage to that is that they don’t sync up with each other. If I were to subscribe to news feeds using Safari, those feeds would live on my computer. If I read a story on my computer it will still show up on my phone. Google Reader gets around that problem completely by being a rather good website you can visit. There are alternative online services but none that I’ve found work as well as Reader.
If you subscribe to the right feeds for you, reading the news can be quite an entertaining process that leads to disappointment when you get to the end. Now Google have got you covered with the addition of two new wonderful features.
First of all they’ve started recommending feeds to you. I’m not sure exactly how it works but it looks to me like they’re taking a look at the RSS feeds you already subscribe to and recommending new feeds based on that.
You can see in this image that my own Google Reader account is recommending that I follow a feed from IMDB probably based on various movie blog feeds I read, Sky News and Channel 4 News based around the BBC and Guardian feeds that I read, and finally All About Maemo based on me reading the All About Symbian feed.
That could be damaging enough to my day. However Google thought they’d take an extra step and take all my work time away from me. Now when I reach the end of the news I’m greeted by the message you can see below.
Clicking that “Show me my recommendations” button can be the end of everything. What you see when you click it is a NEVER ENDING slew of news articles that Google have found based on what you already read. You start off innocently scrolling through the first few articles quite enjoying the process until you realize that it never ends. The fun and entertainment never ends either. I’m discovering web comics, tech blogs, movie blogs and more that I never knew existed before. I know Google thought they were doing a good thing. They just didn’t stop to think about how much work we’ve all got to get done. Bless them.
