Andreas Ebbert-Karroum

The Headline may be a bit enthusiastic, since I was not using a feedreader until now. I was looking for a simple solution to get new posts from the blogs I’m following without having to visit each and every blog, just to see that there are no new items there. Well, most of you probably know what a feedreader is and what it’s good for already So since today, I’m using the Google Reader. From the first impression it looks really usable and slick.

There’s also a Firefox plugin that notifies you of new items to read. When you click on a RSS link in Firefox, it asks you what you want to do with it, if you set Google as your default, then Google asks if you want to add the feed to your personal Google Homepage, or to the Google Reader. If you follow the instructions to default to the Google Reader, you still have to confirm you want to subscribe, so you save no click but loose choice.

The only problem I have right now is that Google Reader is not accepting feeds from Wordpress, which really is a show stopper. Neither my own RSS feed works, nor the one of Carsten Schmidt’s blog, which is hosted on the wordpress.com website. If anybody knows what to do about it, I’d be grateful.

Update (2008-04-11): The problem with Wordpress feeds in Google Reader is now apparently gone. No idea who changed what to make it work.

Update 2 (2008-04-11): Also nice is that you have a RSS feed for recommended posts, that I’ve now included in my sidebar.

After installing and activating the Twitter-Updater plugin for Wordpress, all new and edited posts should now be announced on twitter.