Google Account Required
You need a Google account to sign up for Google reader. If you do not have Gmail I would encourage you to do so now. There are numerous advantages to having a Gmail account. Enough to fill several blog posts.
If you own a domain name you can sign up for a Google Apps account, which gives you the same suite of offerings from Google: Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs, and Sites, yet they’re all associated with your particular domain.
To get started, go to the Google reader sign in page where you can log in or create an account.
Navigation Pane
The left side pane allows you to navigate. When you log in, the Home screen view is selected by default. It shows what is new, recently starred and shared items, etc.
I don’t use this page and have changed my default screen to All Items. This is done by clicking the Settings link in the top, right corner of the screen, and changing Start Page to All Items.
The All Items view shows all the feeds in the browser’s right pane. There are several controls at the top of this pane. A couple are important.
Show: new items OR all items
I choose to show only new items. It can get very overwhelming and cluttered if you show all items.
Show: Expanded OR List
I use the List view because you can look at more information. With the Expanded view there is a lot of scrolling and each article you scroll over gets marked as read.
The View Settings button has three sort settings: Sort by newest, Sort by oldest, and Sort by magic. I use the default setting of Sort by newest.
Each item can be viewed by clicking on the heading. Some items show the full article and others show only a summary. For those that show a summary, you have to click on the article heading to see the full post. Most of the time this will open another browser tab where you can read the article, and then close the tab when you are done to return to Google reader.
Starred Items
You can save any article by clicking the star. This puts the article into the Starred Item system folder where you can view it at your leisure.
Trends
The trends page has charts and tables of statistics that give you a lot of information about your reading trends. There are numerous settings you can manipulate to see different data sets. I check this every once in a while to see the percentage of articles I’m reading.
Subscriptions
Get organized by putting your subscriptions into folders. This helps tremendously when the reader seems to be overloaded with information. I organize by themes: Basketball, Football, Excel, Social Media, Tech, etc.
Each folder can hold one or more subscriptions. As you can see the Basketball folder has three feeds and the Social Media folder has two feeds. You can view all feeds in a folder or a single feed within a folder.
Feeds can exist outside a folder, which is what happens when you first start with Google reader. However, soon you will feel the need to organize all your feeds and creating folders is the answer.
You can view all of your subscriptions by going to Settings > Subscriptions. This page gives you options to delete, rename, unsubscribe, and change folders. A subscription feed can belong to more than one folder, a feature I don’t presently use. You can also make changes to multiple subscriptions at the same time.
Begin Subscribing to Feeds
The universal icon for feeds is show to the left. Some websites display this feed icon, or some variation, so you can easily subscribe to their feed with your reader of choice. Google reader is among the readers you can select.
Browse for Stuff
When you click the Browse for Stuff link in the Navigation pane the default view is the Browse tab. Here you can get started quickly with prepackaged feed bundles.
The Recommendations tab shows feeds that are based on your interests and those of users with similar interests. Obviously you will need to begin using Google reader for a while before this feature becomes relevant.
The Search tab has several options to find feeds that may interest you. You can search by keyword, find people sharing reader, friends and family who use social media sites, or track keywords.
If you know a particular site to which you would like to subscribe, the Search feature will most likely be the fastest method. Here is an example for searching for the USA Today news feed.
When you click the Search for feeds button the resulting output shows you a number of feeds, from which to you can choose. It also shows the post frequency, which can be in posts per week, per month, etc. Clicking the Subscribe button will automatically bring the feed into Google reader and show up under Subscriptions.
Here is a video of how I deal with my feeds when they pile up.
Hopefully this has been a helpful overview Google reader to get you started. Please let me know in the comments if you like this type of information.
Related posts:
- Why You Need Google Reader
- Using Google Alerts to Monitor Information That Interests You
- iPhone Push Email + Google Voice = Free SMS Messaging
- Add a Google Sports Calendar
- Google Buzz Launch Leaves Me Half Satisfied
Share on
Twitter
Tumblr
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I will have to check that out, and a post would be helpful, too. I think doing some of those for my students might be really helpful for them.
I’ve been using Google Reader for a few years now, and I like it. I’m interested, though, in how you do the video. Do you think you’ll ever do a post about that?
Very helpful! I’m up and running.
Thanks, Gregory.