My favorite feed reader just got three long overdue updates:
- It can now count to 1000. Back before this Google Reader update (during the wild, young days of the internet), on days when I couldn’t check Google Reader, the unread post count would build up rather quickly. However, instead of being told precisely how many blog posts I had, Google would only tell me that I had “100+” unread posts. Not particularly informative for a company that prides itself on being the organizer of the world’s information. Today, it can go to 1000. I have yet to reach the point where I have that many posts unread, but at this rate, I think in another year or two, Google may update the reader so that it can count to 10000. But right now, our technology just can’t handle numbers that big — I mean why else would we limit the number size?
- You can use “back” and “forward”. This may seem quite trivial, given that Google Reader is on a webpage and hence one would expect that the back and forward arrows on your toolbar should work like they do on a regular webpage. But, Google Reader is no ordinary webpage, it’s an AJAX application, which means that movement from page to page is not so clear cut. Implementing “forward” and “back” has actually been a challenge for a lot of online Web developers who create AJAX applications, so it’s very nice (and quite a feat for some hapless programmer who probably had to do a lot of unappreciated behind-the-scene work) that they were able to implement this.
- Search. What do people think of when they think of Google? They think of a search tool that works well. Why use Gmail? Because it has a great user interface and a very good search tool. Why use Google Desktop? Because you get the company who’s the reigning expert on search to help search your computer. Why use Google Scholar? Because its a great way to search for academic papers. The idea is simple. One of the core competencies of Google is search. So why would a company renowned for search, known for improving its product base by adding its legendary search expertise, create a product without search despite the fact that it could clearly benefit from it? Well, the question is no longer relevant, as Google has finally gotten around to implementing search in Google Reader, allowing me to dig through every post I’ve ever read.
Took you long enough, Google.