I've been meaning to pull the plug on my use of iGoogle as my RSS / feed reader (stop snickering). I knew that there were several dedicated feed readers and suspected that there were benefits to using them. This week, having switched, I think that is indeed true.

This is more of a "why Google Reader is better than iGoogle" than any comparison of feed readers - I've only use this one. Here is my timeline of how I "kept up" with news & web information:

1. version 1: visiting websites regularly
   I did this for years
2. v2: I bookmarked them in a dedicated folder ("blogs&periodicals") inside my browser that I frequented - now they were all together
   6 months
3. v3: iGoogle. This works quite well.
   about 30 months
4. v4: Google Reader. There are some serious advantages to using software that was designed for reading news.

I vaguely knew it was a good idea, but there were 2 things that really pushed me over the line:

1. "Remembers" what I've read
   I relied on my browser to remember what pages I had visited and that then showed the links in iGoogle as a different color. I have a different sign-in at work than at home and there are 1 or 2 feeds that overlap: so this method didn't work 100%.
   When I had to re-boot Firefox (due to some issues with my computer) I lost all this.
   Google Reader obviously remembers what items I have or haven't read much better than my browser.
2. iPhone
   I wanted to be able to read stuff on my iPhone. While this worked OK with iGoogle, iGoogle didn't have the same layout as my desktop (which was annoying since item location was important to me). But, more importantly, my iPhone didn't "mark it as read" on my desktop.
   This is basically the same issue, but broader than above: more devices (not just browser forgetfulness).

Why it's good to have a dedicated RSS reader (or, why it's better than iGoogle which was better than my other methods):

• Freedom to add as many feeds as you want.
  Previously I tried to limit it based on screen space - which was good in a way, but a bit silly really.
  I had several tabs to indicate general interest level - but rarely checked any tab but the main page.
  Now, I can quickly see the status and find the interesting stuff from among 100 subscribed feeds.
• Frees up iGoogle homepage for dashboard. My new iGoogle page is a feed of items to be read from delicious, LinkedIn Answers in an interesting category, and StackOverflow answers in a particular tag. Work & Home still differ slightly, but both are focused on "stuff happening right now" and less on "things to read before they change"
• I can scan & kill things quickly. Previously I would miss interesting things on Slashdot, but I had 9 Slashdot posts showing on my iGoogle page that I wasn't interesting in.
  Google Reader lets me scan through 30-40 posts and read just the 2 that are interesting. I really like the "mark all as read" button
• The Trends screen is fun
• Keyboard Shortcuts are fast
• Categorizing
  Previously I used page location to indicate importance & category. Now I have more categories and they are better defined and more useful: Main", "Tech", "Firehose". Firehose, btw, is where things like Slashdot, TechCrunch, and Wired News go. My rule with Firehose is that I can read it if I'm interesting or kill the whole category without touching it. Main, on the other hand, I generally read 100% of the posts (and I'm more selective about that category).

Weak points:

• Let me use Delicious
  Google Reader allows me to tag things, but I want to bookmark them in delicious - where I bookmark everything else, not inside Google Reader. I can launch the item on its webpage and tag it in delicious, but integration would be nice (I'm going to look for write a Greasemonkey script to help with this)
• Change Categories
  I've categorized all my feeds: but sometimes I want to shift it for later reading. If I find something in the Firehose that is tech-related, it would be nice to move just that item, not the whole feed. Unless "tags" work that way, I don't see how to do it (I'll have to read some tutorials on Google Reader to learn it better).
• The Trends: "Most Obscure" is ludicrous.
  I'm guessing it only measures other Google Reader users, because Fred Wilson's A VC which has 144,000 readers according to Feedburner, only shows as 19 as is "obscure" according to Google Reader
• Mark as Read
  "Mark as read" without reading - or "kill" items quicker. Google Reader increases the ratio of "time spent finding" vs. "time spent reading the found stuff" but a "Mark as read" button next to each item in list view would be handy. I could quickly scan and "delete" items whose title didn't suggest that they were interesting.
• Snooze or "ToRead"
  I often scan things and when I find something interesting, but longer, I want to mark it for later so that I can come back to it (like, not over lunch, but later in the evening). Right now, I just leave it unread, but then it sits in the main "pile" that is refreshed and is part of the "re-scan" later. Also, I "scan" a lot of things, then "read" - it's 2 different activities (almost 2 different parts of my brain)

Overall, Google Reader is dramatically better than iGoogle: more time spent reading interesting things, things that are uninteresting are "gone" from sight quickly, and I feel like I can read faster.