There are thousands of ways to harvest and read the various syndicated feeds you get from all your favourite websites to your screen. Integration of feeds onto websites, specialist client software, Flash applications and all manner of widgets to crowd up your desktop are just some of the ways that people read the content.

But that’s the thing; although I am certain that there are many different ways that people have been reading the feeds, and I’m certain that they’re all very happy with their respective methods, nothing’s seemed to quite fit into my lifestyle.

RSS feeds and their various cousins are all about convenience and speed. That was their point. If it was difficult to gain access, modify and read them, then their raison d’être is negated, and you may as well just remember the huge list of various sites and blogs you would otherwise read each day.

Not a nice task.

Once again, however, Google stepped into the fray and like some glorious Internet Angel, and gave me Google Reader. God bless ‘em.

For me, it’s perfect. I can easily add, delete, manage and group all my feeds into whatever manner I choose. I can mark articles of particular interest, add them to a public screen that I can share with my friends, and can search all my feeds for particular keywords (and here’s the kicker) all on my mobile. When I’m stuck on the train into Central London on the commuter trail, this is a veritable Godsend.

Yes, there are other applications, and as a feed reader alone they do the job just as well as Google Reader; Feedlounge and Bloglines are the two that come to mind immediately, but then comes my next point. Netvibes and it’s wonderful desktop interface was the most beautiful thing that I happily used for the longest time. It’s ability to take all feeds, plus all sorts of other widgets and put them in one glorious screen was a fantastic feature, but slowly it became unmanageable for me as the number of feeds I read increased (last count I’m reading around 90 feeds, and I add more each day…). One slow move across to Google Personalised Home page, and one Google Reader widget addition, and all my problems were solved. Two months later my Google page contains Calendars, YouTube videos, easy access to a plethora of Wikis and search engines and all the feeds I can possibly connect to.
Netvibes, I’m sorry, I’ve left you for another website; one that has better integration with a web-based RSS reader.

You remember all those films set in the distant Future where people would watch, on one screen, around 30 programmes at once? It’s like that, but not so dated. We might not have jetpacks and hoverboards yet, but my Lordy, if this isn’t the Future Today, I don’t know what is.

Google, whatever reasons you have for providing all these wonderful applications for free, please don’t suddenly become an Evil Overlord and enslave all our children just yet…

By the way, there’s a tiny little logo at the bottom of this page with ‘RSS’ next to it. Just thought I’d point it out…