Signing-up for the service is very easy, as many people will already have a Google Account, which is all you need. Even if you don't, it's a rapid process that takes under 3 minutes - the only possible problem is discovering that the account name you want is already taken!

You can add feeds to Google Reader by adding the feed URL or searching for the name of websites or topics that you believe will have an RSS feed. You can also add feeds from the websites themselves, looking for the little RSS icon (an orange square) and then choosing Google Reader from the options you'll see.

Once you have added feeds to Google Reader, you'll be able to organize them into folders for easier management - this is especially important as you subscribe to more and more feeds. You'll be able to tag and manage folders either via the drop down menus to the right of folder names, or via Settings.

Feed items (articles and blog posts) are displayed in the main panel of Google Reader. There are various ways of organizing this display, sorting by date or "magic" (posts that Google thinks you will find interesting). You can also display new items as a list of headlines or expanded views of articles. You can also click through the Google Reader headline to see the article in its original location.

Google Reader has a number of interesting options for sharing items, both within the Google family and elsewhere on the web, such as Facebook and Twitter. You'll also be able to see suggestions for other items that might interest you and view statistics on your usage of Google Reader.

If you follow RSS feeds, Google Reader is the ultimate app - there's simply nothing like it.

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Essentially, the service lets you create your own personalized news page, so you don't have to visit each site or blog separately. Once you've set up a Bloglines account, it's very easy to start adding and organizing your feeds. You add a news feed simply by copying the address of the RSS feed into Bloglines. You can then create folders and drag and drop feeds into them.

Just like Google Reader, Bloglines displays your feed list and folders in a panel on the left of the interface. Click on a feed and the latest posts will be displayed in the main window. Alternatively, you can click on a folder and it will display posts from all of the feeds within it in chronological order. It all looks very neat, although, unfortunately, Bloglines doesn't provide an option to preview posts in their original format.

There are lost of useful options and features within Bloglines that improve your news-reading experience. For instance, you can create playlists of feeds and folders, add clippings, and even create a blog based on articles from your feeds, which you can share with others.

Bloglines perhaps isn't quite as good as Google Reader in that it doesn't include support for tagging, and we experienced the occasional error when fetching latest feeds.

Overall, Bloglines is a user-friendly news reader that allows you to manage vast quantities of sources in a manageable way.

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