I know I have written about Google Reader before, but much has happened since… It is getting more social!!

I have been working as a freelance developer for almost two years now, and I recently I got the change to do some teaching at CMD Breda. I was really amazed by the fact that almost none of my students knew Google Reader. I think Google Reader is VERY useful to students, it offers a nice way to find out what is happening around you.

Fist I have to explain how it works. Google Reader uses an open source communication format called RSS. It is some kind of a summary of a website. Wikipedia has a full article about this.

Google Reader offers a different way to see all the sites you want, back in 2008 when I wrote my previous post, only a few sites had a RSS feed, today almost every (good) website has a RSS feed. For me Google Reader is the start and end of every day. I check it twice a day, in the morning before I start working, and just before I go to sleep.

The thing I really like is the social feature they added a while back. With this social feature you can share items to your friends (read: Google contacts). For me this means I see really cool design stuff I normally wouldn’t find. And I hope my friends like the stuff I share

A short video explanation of Google Reader: