Some quick first impressions...
Google reader gives me a headache! It's so cluttered and monotonic. The feeds themselves appear in the same font size as all the clutter down the sides and above, which means that, regardless of content, they just don't make me want to read them! I can probably change this somehow, but at the moment I'm feeling so frazzled and overwhelmed from looking at it for even a few minutes, I just can't be bothered. I'll have to investigate further tomorrow...
My instincts tell me that, in theory, RSS is a great idea, but if it means losing all the formatting, colour, variety and visual stimulation that you get from reading the same text in its natural environment, so to speak (e.g. Judith Mackrell's dance reviews on the Guardian website, rather than fed to Google reader), then I think I'll stick with web browsing to get my information.
I think I'm taking a risk with this post. It's gone 5pm (home-time!), I'm hungry, tired, and haven't really researched the topic thoroughly yet. Is this blogging suicide? Oh well. No doubt I will learn a valuable lesson regarding the foolishness of posting in such circumstances...
4 comments:
I use feeds to skim read items then open the ones with illustrations to view them as the author intended
That's an interesting point, I've just had a quick look through Google Reader settings and can't find an obvious way to change the appearance in any way. Like Suzan, I tend to click through to things that catch my interest to view it "properly".
Thanks both. I've just been having a look at Google reader again in light of your comments and am seeing it completely differently. When I think of it as simply a starting point, a central place I can go to find out what news there is, after which I can click on the items of interest to read them in pop-up windows in their original formats, it's a lot less mind-boggling. I like Google reader as a way of gathering news into one place, but I definitely don't like it as an environment in which to read that news.
I'm also not a fan of Google reader, but do tend to use it just as a starting point.
Thanks, Jenny, for noticing the broken link on my blog - now fixed, I hope.
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