I started my reading blogs using an aggregator about eight months ago and my choice was bloglines. The most important thing was the ability to have everything online, so that I could read the feeds at work and at home with no need to synchronize them.

After reading a rave review of the updated Google Reader on Lifehacker, I decided it was time to give it a another try. I must say I’m really thrilled with this web app.

Here’s what I really love about it:

• Clear and easy to use interface
• Items are marked as read as you scroll: this is a big improvement over bloglines that automatically marked all items as read when displayed on the right panel. This can be useful when I have a long list and no time to read it all in one session
• Ability to see the posts in list and detail view and mark them as special
• Shortcuts harmonized with GMail to navigate between posts

On top of that, there are some greasemonkey scripts for Firefox that make using it even easier:

• Jasper’s google reader subscribe shows a small feed icon on the top of any site that supports feeds. Clicking on that, you can add the site to your subscription list. If you are already subscribed to the feed, it shows a check mark.
• Feed integration for Gmail that lets you easily integrate Google Reader feeds into Gmail

The only thing I miss is the ability to specify the tag of a new feed when I add one.

Technorati Tags: aggregators, Google Reader, rss