Sunday Tips, Part 9: Google Reader

RSS reading is something a lot of people don’t understand. In a sentence, it’s a way to bring the latest from all your favorite sites into one inbox, where you can read it all without having to navigate to the individual sites.

For those who are looking to try out RSS reading, Google Reader is the best of the bunch. It’s got a ton of great features that make reading your blogs and websites incredibly easy, productive and efficient.

Even if you’ve been a Reader reader for a long time, here’s  a few tips you may not know about for how to make Google Reader just a bit better:

1. Scrolling

to scroll down in a list from item to item, instead of having to scroll all the way through an item you don’t care about, press the J key. To go up, press K.

2. Starring, Sharing, and Showing

To star a particular article for easy access later, press S. To share, it’s Shift-S. To switch between the list view and full view of your feeds is easy- press 1 for expanded view and 2 for list view.

3. Offline-ification-izing

Reader works wonderfully with another great Google application, Gears. This means that you can download all your feeds to your desktop, read them offline, and then sync Reader back to the Web when you’re back online. It’s perfect for when you’re on the road, on a plane, or anywhere else outside the Internet’s reach.

4. Mobility

Google Reader’s also an awesome application if you’re not at a computer. On any mobile browser (Cell phones, etc.) you can navigate to www.google.com/reader/m for a great mobile interface. If you’re an iPhone user, try www.google.com/reader/i/ for an excellent and easy interface.

5. Switcheroo

RSS feeds come in XML files. The aggregate, though, is called an OPML file. What does that stand for? Beats me. What matters is that you can import or export an OPML file to bring all your feeds into or out of Reader. To import or export, click “Settings” and then “Import/Export.”

6. Space Freedom

To get more vertical space in your browser, press F11. That will remove all the toolbars, making more space for reader. You can also press the U key to remove the Reader sidebar, giving you more horizontal space for feed reading.

7. Bail

Don’t want to read your feeds, but don’t want that horribly large “Unread” number haunting you? Click “All Items.” Press 2. Then click “Mark all as Read.” Gone. The end. Kaput. You’re good to go, and no more “1000+ unread” making you miserable.

8. More, More, More!

On the other hand, maybe you just can’t get enough of your feeds! If you get to the end, but just have to have something else to read, press the R key to refresh all of your feeds, and get back to reading.

9. Grease It Up

One thing Google Reader’s not short on is Greasemonkey scripts (the bits of code that change how pages look and operate, in Firefox, Safari and IE). Here’s just a few: Reader + Delicious; Reader + Gmail; Smart Subscribe; and Custom Search.

Google Reader is a killer application, and makes keeping tabs on all your favorite websites incredibly easy. Whether you’ve never used it or used it forever, there are tons of tweaks to make it an even better application.

Do you use an RSS reader? Which one?

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