Preview Feeds in Google Reader
Here's another reason why I find Google Reader a excellent choice for reading your RSS feeds.
Most of us have a collection of feeds that contain similar subject matter. As a geek, most of my feeds are geek-related. As a geek who likes to stay up to speed, I also like to know what other blogs and feeds are good to read.
This is where Google Reader's Top Recommendations come in. Google do a great job of throwing other feeds in your face that you might like to read based on the kind of stuff that you've already subscribed to.
As you can see, it lists a few blogs that are of a similar nature to those that you read and gives you the option to view them. When you click on the View all >> button, you're presented with a rather extensive list:
This next bit is something I really like. When I see a feed that I might be interested in (after weighing up how active the blog is and how many subscribers there are), I can click on the feed to preview it without having to subscribe to it first! Check it out:
You can browse through the feed and interact with it as if it was part of your subscription list already. If you see some articles that take your fancy and the content appeals to you, you can easily subscribe by clicking on the profoundly obvious Subscribe button. If I don't like it, I can go back to the list, and I can even click on the "No thanks" link next to the feed so that it doesn't appear in my recommended list again.
Too easy. This is exactly the kind of "ease of use" feature that I want from my RSS reader. I'm sure a couple of other readers would provide similar features, but the simplicity of this really blows my skirt up.
+1 Google Reader (again).
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OJ
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dud