Public Service Announcement: Google Reader

I’m not usually one for giving tech tips or web advice, but in the wake of this week’s tragic story, sharing something that I use everyday with others is the least that I could do for someone who, through the articles he wrote, has educated many including myself in the way of new tech gadgetry.

For those of you who aren’t using a news aggregator, why not? News aggregators can save you quite a bit of time since the content on all of your favorite websites can be found in this nifty one-stop-shop web tool. And since aggregators are updated dynamically, you’re always in the know with the most up-to-the-minute information. Most content is in headline format and includes the first couple sentences of an article – this gives you the ability to quickly skim and read only the articles you are most interested in.

Do me a favor and get Google Reader (it’s in their Google Labs section). If you’re new to RSS technology or unsure about what to do with those XML buttons that you see on websites, Google Reader makes it really easy to subscribe to groups of websites at a time by clicking on a single button. Need a news feed? Click on the News bundle and you get feeds to six different websites. Google Reader is blog-friendly as well. If the blogs you like to read are on popular host sites like Blogger, Flickr, or Myspace, all you need to do is enter their user name, and just like that, you’ve created a feed to that user’s blog.

Another great feature of Google Reader is the ability to “star” certain pieces of content so that you can share it with others. Bloggers like me have used this feature as a side item to their blogs giving readers the ability to check out websites that bloggers look at on a regular basis.

So go ahead and get Google Reader. And while you’re doing that, make the Google Personalized Homepage your home page. You can move gadgets around to truly make it the page you want it to be and include only the things that are most important to you.