Searching through all of those RSS subscriptions on a small screen can be quite a bit of a cumbersome experience, but to make Google Reader for iPhone even better, Google took advantage of the device’s capabilities and released a new beta version designed for the iPhone and other mobile phones with advanced browsers.
“Google Reader is a Web-based program, able to read Atom and RSS feeds online or offline.”
The new beta version of Google Reader for the iPhone enables you to navigate through folders and subscriptions in a single column. The mobile friendly view is supposed to come with faster load times too, because it has been further optimized for the cell phone environment — clicking on an individual item in the list loads it in place rather than taking you to a new screen.
Google Reader has been available to mobile surfers for quite a while: Google introduced an XHTML version of Reader in May of 2006 — the language of choice for mobile Web development, and now released the new 2008 version with many of the same features that are available in their desktop app.
“This new version is intended to offer several of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items,” the company said.
The recently introduced Notes feature and your friend’s shared items feed have also moved up and get top billing just above your tags/folders. Whether a site updates hourly, daily or monthly, you can be sure that you would not miss a thing. The view of individual items in your feeds has also been redesigned to match the desktop look — options to star, share or mark as unread are all in their familiar locations.
Google Reader also continuously checks your favorite news sites for new content. The new interface is also much better at providing feedback when things are loading and makes it easier to revisit read items. Furthermore, this application shows you all of your favorite sites in one convenient place. It is like a personalized inbox for the entire web.
Google also stated that the new Reader Beta allows for starring, sharing, and keeping unread from a single location, never forcing you to leave the list view or refresh the page. It works on any mobile phone browser, so you can access your favorite news anywhere and anytime.
“Since it is still in beta, we are not going to automatically send it to you, so bookmark the site so that you do not forget the address,” Google said. Instead, users must navigate manually to the page, which is located at (http://www.google.com/reader/i/). “We love getting feedback from users, so let us know what you think in our discussion group.”
Recently, Google made its traditional iPhone interface available in over 30 different countries and 15 different languages. With Google Apps you can access your most used Google services and boost your productivity on the go.