How to Use Google Reader

Google Reader Introduction
One of the most useful but non-used features of Google is its Reader. You may have seen the strange icons that are orange with "waves" coming out of them called "feeds" but never knew what they were (called RSS icon). I was just like that until I finally had the time to check them out and, now, I regret not using them earlier. In short, you can read all of your favorite news or updates of websites in Google Reader and have a link available for the entire article. Each item (or news or article or whatever you subscribed to) will automatically be updated from the site so it's like your own custom newspaper!

How to Access Google Reader
Sign into your Google Account and click on "My Account" on the top. This will give you a list of Google products including the Reader, which is on the right side of the page. Click on it and you're within the Reader Application! Although you won't have any subscriptions because you're not subscribed to anything (unless you accidentally subscribed already).

Google Reader Format
On the left side, you are presented with a menu. Home is where you are right now; it'll give you a quick breakdown of all the things going on once you get started. Right now, there shouldn't be much (except for the news from the Google Reader Team). All Items will list every single item in the reader organized by newest (by default) or something else. There are two views here: Expanded View and List View. I prefer Expanded because you can see a preview of the item before clicking on it; a list will only show the headline (but it'll show more items on the screen). Starred Items is like your Gmail account (if you don't use Gmail, start!): certain items can be "starred" for quick access. Shared Items is if you have an item you want to share. A link is provided for you so you can give it to all of your friends or whoever you want. All of these, of course, have the Expanded View and List View. For a person who just wants random information: Trends. This gives you a whole bunch of statistics to what you have read compared to how much stuff there are; an interesting, but not necessary part of Google Reader.

Getting Started
On the left side, in the middle, click on Browse. Google has already created "Bundles" which you can subscribe to. These bundles feature popular subscriptions like ESPN or Christian Science Monitor or even Colbert Report videos. Using Bundles, you can easily create a massive collection of your favorite items; if you don't want the ones included, you can find them from the Search option below. Sometimes, you don't know what you want to subscribe to; in this case, just start browsing the internet and eventually you'll find a website you're interested in. If it has any kind of updates (daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly), it'll probably have the orange icon with the waves (refer to picture). If it has this, click on it and add it to your Google Reader.

Using Google Reader
Now that you've started, all you have to do is wait as the updates come in! If you're subscribed to a lot of things, then you could have hundreds of updates a day (or maybe an hour). In this case, you may want to cut back some unless you really plan on reading all of them, or just read the headline and go to the next item. All updated subscriptions will be in Bold so you know that it has an update as well as how many updates in the parenthesis. There's a handy feature that allows the Reader to display only subscriptions with updates or display all the subscriptions so you can quickly access what you haven't read as opposed to reading non-updated ones.

Have fun with Google Reader!