Michael Golrick on Google Reader
February 28th, 2007Michael Golrick took a run at Google Reader:
"Here is where my problem is, and it seems to be the way that Google, and many other web services work, that it assumes that I always want to see the newest item first. Well, maybe I am too concrete-sequential, or anal-retentive, or obsessive-compulsive, but, here is a news flash folks: I don’t want to read that way! I want to be able to logically follow a thread and have the OLDEST ITEM FIRST!"
I wonder how he wants to read his posts and if he’s adamant about it. :-) Heh.
I agree with his notion that the option should be there. Whatever works for you, right? If it had the option available, I wonder if Michael would switch over. It certainly has all of the bells and whistles as Bloglines, but is much faster at indexing, reading feeds, and the options blow me away. Bloglines, IMO, hasn’t developed much in the past few years and is pretty much a stagnant product.
The thing about Google Reader that intruiges me is that Google has an endless amount of money and staff to work on all of their tools, including the reader. It’s just going to get better. I hope.
Update - As a few commenters pointed out, there is a way to sort by oldest item. So, Michael, care to give it another try? 
February 28th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
I’m confused. I use Google Reader and under Feed Settings you can sort oldest first. Or are we talking about two different things?
February 28th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
I think this reflects an element of Web 2.0 interfaces that I don’t see discussed very often - the non-linear, mushroom-cloud nature of it all. I remember being frustrated by this same reverse chronology thing when I first started reading blogs. Then came tag clouds and that was another adjustment altogether. Now I find certain situations at my job that would be perfect for a tag cloud, but I meet with a lot of resistance from folks who haven’t used them and find them too chaotic. The younger students I work with have whole-heartedly embraced this kind of navigation - not only do they ignore all chronological ordering in their surfing, but they find alternative ways of exploring a website like, say, a blog. They view by tag, or by “most comments” or do a direct search for whatever they want. Maybe we’ll start seeing this non-linear apprach in printed narrative form, too, if we don’t already.
February 28th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I’m with Max on this one. Option is very much available.
February 28th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
If he uses tags to put those feeds into folders, he can set the sort order for the folder, which would address the issue of having to go through each feed individually.
March 1st, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Yes, you can change it feed by feed. I’m im porting about 175 feeds, I don’t have the time to change each one, one at a time.
In addition, when I logged in today, I am getting old stuff. Like from my daughter’s LiveJournal account from when she was in high school. (She is a college junior now!)
In addition, for me it is loading a lot more slowly than Bloglines.
I am not convinced yet. It is not intuitive enough for me, and lacks a basic functionality to get me to change. If I were starting from scratch, I might entertain it. But to get me to switch, they need to help me import my feeds the way I want them to be without having to individually manage each one.
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:44 pm
I set up Google Reader from an opml file exported from Bloglines. All the feeds came across. After this discussion I decided to experiment. I deleted all the Bloglines feeds, exported an opml file from Reader and imported into Bloglines. Then I marked both accounts all read. I periodically opened two browse windows and did a side-by-side comparison of Bloglines and Google Reader.
I didn’t see a lot of difference between the two feed readers. There wasn’t a significant difference between the number of new feeds in each reader.
Admittedly this was a short term experiment done over onky a day and a half but I’d say that choosing between Google Reader and Bloglines is a mater of which one has features that match your work style.
I don’t share Michael’s need for a global oldest-first setting and I do think that management of feeds is a bit easier with Bloglines. On the other hand, I do like Reader because it fits into a single sign-on suite of applications that I use daily and is is a pretty good feed reader for the way I work.
So, no argument from me concerning Michael’s decision to stick with Bloglines.