Top 5 Needed Features & Fixes For Google Reader

Google Reader is a great webware RSS feed aggregator, but it isn’t without its fair share of flaws.

1. Search: ability to search through your feeds like you can in Gmail. The fact there are two methods currently available to add a search feature to Google Reader should be justification enough for the demand for such a feature.
2. Same Story Consolidation: Google News does this, it would be a natural addition to Google Reader in order to root out redundancy amongst your RSS feeds.
3. New Story Notifications: Many software based RSS aggregators allow for pop-up notifications to alert their user to news that was just published. Why couldn’t Google Reader do the same thing with their webware based RSS aggregator much in the way they do in Gmail with Gtalk IM notifications (though this would certainly require the ability of user customization). Furthermore many users want to see the integration of the Gmail and Google Reader services, as there are also two methods created to combine these two great services together. It would also seem a logical enough of a move for Google to create standalone Greader software application that does the same thing, but has the benefits that come with a software application.
4. Aggregation Speed Increase: Google Reader has issues with speed when it comes to delivering your content to you via RSS. Often there can be a regular 1 to 2 hour delay in receiving your content via RSS, from when it is actually published.
5. Solve Overflow Memory Leak Problems: The ability to auto-refresh or just manually refresh your RSS feeds in Google Reader is a great feature, but the downside is you will find all those feeds build up in your session, and if your running Firefox, this can cause some serious memory leaks, if you use it frequently.

The application of these 5 features and fixes for Google Reader could make it formidable contender in the RSS reader market.

Originally posted on February 7, 2007 @ 8:26 pm