I’ve been pretty impressed with the Google Reader which I started using a few weeks ago, especially since it bridges over to the mobile service so cleanly. The mobile site hasn’t got the most flashiest of interfaces, but it is real sticky and genuinely useful. Now why do I think it is so good? Because it does what I want it to do:

• View news articles from feeds I find interesting. I can see the next 10 headlines on the radar and drill down when I need to. I am even getting to the point where I prefer reading these headlines on my mobile as opposed to on my mac. I know I have the luxury of screen size of the E61i, but whether I’m sitting back on my sofa or waiting in line, I can quickly get my news fix.
• Mark articles as interesting and share them. I even share them with this blog (see in the sidebar of the homepage of this blog).
• Filter news based on my mood. I’m either looking at whatever (I’ve got loads of time and am just browsing), feeds I really rate (I’m just quickly make sure I’m not missing out on happenings), mobile related (Let’s find out what the buzz is) or obscure feeds (let’s check through some of the more offbeat news)

So I’ve got into the stage of configuring my feeds and reading trends at my mac and reading the news on my mobile, playing each medium to it’s strengths.

It’s not all rosey though. Some feeds provide lots of content, but others just provide a sentence relying on a click through to the main site. The click through experience is appalling, whether or not I go through google’s own transcoder. Most sites are not mobile ready and just take too long to load and the google transcoding UX is hit or miss as to whether the content I want is on the initial page of the transcoding. At least google give me the choice of which one I prefer – I’ve opted for the transcoded version (for the time-being), but to be honest I don’t click through often, since the experience is typically poor. Also, if the feed doesn’t provide a decent amount of content, then I’m starting to remove them from my reader. I actual would encourage feed providers to include with a decent body of content with the ad (text or image) embedded. I don’t mind seeing the add in the middle of content that I’m enjoying reading. As a service provider myself this does throw up some challenges for analytics .

I took a quick look at the iPhone AJAX UI which gives you an idea of UIs we may all head towards. It was only partially compatible with my E61i though. Furthermore we can only move towards such UIs if it ready does improve the UX – i.e. not slow and not unnecessary eye-candy that distracts from my primary ask – I want to read relevant news.

Good work Google & thanks.