Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Google seems to update at least one of its products once a month or so.  Sometimes the updates can be small, other times they can fundamentally change how some people use the products.  The newest update to Google Reader seems to be somewhere in between those two extremes.

The new updates, overall, seem to make the service easier to use.  The most obvious ease of use update is the updated new user page.  It features six items which help explain Google Reader, including a new tutorial video.  To help out those users not familiar with Reader, its possible to import feeds from iGoogle, though why someone would use iGoogle for feeds and not Reader is beyond me. 

The other major update is that now you can view which of your friends share stories the most.  It also keeps track of whose stories you actually read when they’re shared.  Both of which can be useful so you can tell who’s been spamming your inbox with shared stories that you never end up reading.

The Google Reader team admits that the new features in this update come from blog, Twitter and the Google discussion groups.  Its nice to know that they monitor a variety of sources when it comes to figuring out what people want.

Read [Google Reader Blog]