I have been loosely following the conversation about River of News, between Robert Scoble and Dave Weiner. I am biased. I like my desktop applications. I always have. But I saw Robert’s comments about trying it and seeing how much easier it was to keep up with the news. Like most, I have a bunch of blogs that I keep up with or try to. Like most, I find that keeping up with it to be difficult. So I wanted to try something that would help me with that.

On first try and look, it took a little bit to get used to. But once I adjusted to how the river worked and google reader handled it was easy to fall in love with it. It works very much like a desktop application. I use it from home and from work, with no configuration and little trouble. I started to use it religously, keeping up with things and finding news items of interest. I could easily share items and mark them to read later, I can even categorize them. All was good.

Today I had read an article and wanted to get back to it. Problem, I forgot to star it and/or tag it. How could I find it again when I wasn’t even sure what feed it was from. I’d have to sort through hundreds of new items to find it. I needed a search button. This made me think about what I use news aggregator for. I tend to skim the news and mark it for later read. I also categorize stuff for easier retrival. So far so good. I also like to use the computer for repeated tasks; I want the computer to search for items that I might want to read. A watchlist. I can’t find either of these functionalities on Google Reader. Things that I would consider to be essential.

Also, my problem with online applications in general still is that for something like this, if the site is down or I am not online I can’t read news. If I use feed demon, I still have everything I need.

Overall, I like what the Google Reader team has done. It is very easy to use and well laid out. The functionality of mobile phone use and bookmarking etc are nice, I’d rather have seen search and watchlists more. Hey Google team, get the search and watchlists working and away to download your news if you want to and you’d have a smash hit.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Reader, Review, News Aggregators