BoBlog

That's a hilarious pun in the subject line, isn't it! Gawd!

That's right, Google launched a completely overhauled Google Reader yesterday. I discovered it when I logged in yesterday and I must admit I was a little freaked out by it. The soup is no longer in aisle 2! I'd become so adept with v. 1! I find that with Google's stuff, the old adage about familiarity isn't true. "...Breeds high productivity and seamless user experience" is more like it.

Today I find myself clutzing through the new Reader interface but it's a familiar process. Google launches a new app and the app itself redefines the way I compute. It happend to me with Gmail, Google Desktop, Picasa, and again now, with the Reader. The learning curve will last about a week and then I'll be using keyboard shortcuts with my eyes closed, or something like that.

Might as well get used to the Reader because this really is the way I/we are going to be using the web, starting NOW! Google's marketing speak behind this product --"your inbox for the web"-- and the Reader's new interface and bell's and whistles (tags, share, etc) are evidence that they really get IT. Of course they do, they're Google!

I can't possibly keep up with all of the "web 2.0" -- I hate that expression -- innovations that are flying out of the www into my browser at lightspeed. There's just too much going on, I'd have to spend all day every day reading and browsing to have any hope of keeping up with it all, and even then it'd be futile. I'd have to change my title to "Web Trends Analyst" -- ooh, I like the sounds of that.

So, my strategy, at least for now, is this: watch Google like a hawk. Google is rolling out cool new stuff literally every day. To experienced bloggers and web jockeys this will seem obvious, but to some of my audience it won't: Google ain't a just a search engine anymore.

Duh! GoogleEarth, Maps.Google.com, Gmail, Picasa, Blogger, SketchUp, and that's the least of it. Just go to Google and click "more" to see what I mean. From there, to see the really cool stuff click the GoogleLabs link. That's where you'll find the new Google Reader, a stunning, AJAX heavy RSS aggregator that I'm using to great affect to, uh, among other things, subscribe to my own blog. That's sick.

No, really, what's really cool that you can pull a lot of these Google tools into one place via the Google personalized homepage. I'm using this to good effect as follows: Using the Google Reader I subscribe to an RSS feed of Google News results for "Goucher College", for example. I've added the Google Reader Google Gadget to my personalized homepage and then, of course, I've set the personalized homepage as the default start page for my browser. I've got a bunch of other feeds in the reader too, miscellaneous stuff that I'm interested in, like the Velux 5 Oceans race, Woot, and some other stuff. Now, whenever I fire up my browser, I see all the feeds. It keeps me very up to date. Too up to date.