Internet Hacks

Google Reader made easier

I received some private inquiries about my previous post regarding Google Reader. One of them said, he found little bit difficult and unsatisfying to use Reader – he still preferred to visit personally the site he likes. Well, I agree if you have only tens of favorite website and you have all the free time to surf the internet. But once you have hundreds of websites you want to at least peek if they have new interesting contents, Reader will really saves you time and let you concentrate to focus with the juicier content only.

Another reason why I like Google Reader is the shortcut keys. As a part time user of my wife’s Mac, days of using Linux’s vi and emacs return to my memories – the power of shortcut keys. You don't need mouse movements and clicks to navigate in Google Reader. Very useful and time saver as well.

Here’s the list of shortcut keys in Reader.

And guess what, you don’t need to memorize all of these keys as you can always press “?” (shift /) – it will show you a cheat-sheet of most commonly used short-cut keys. Very cool!

My online productivity hacks

I’m feeling lighter today after I finished reorganizing (proper tagging) my two ultimate online destinations: Gmail and Google Reader. I'm using Google Reader 90% of my Internet browsing time.

I’m a heavy user of Google Reader. All my favorite sites – hundreds of websites - are subscribed to Google Reader. I can “read” them all in less than an hour. Without Google Reader it will take more than a day for me just to glimpse them all and read the important and interesting one.

If news feed reader like Google Reader is new to you, and you usually manually visit your favorite websites, you will be amaze how time saver and productive you are once you start using news feed readers.

You can try one of my favorites: Google Reader, iGoogle, Netvibes, or NewsGator and please let me know what you think.

For others already using news feed readers, what you guys using and what you can recommend to others?