As something of a Google Reader addict I was interested to try out the new ‘Notes’ feature within the RSS reader, which sees the service take a Twitter-style twist. The tool is designed to let you quickly add information and web site content into a new ‘Notes’ section within Reader. You can manually enter notes or copy and paste web content into a clipping box accessible from your browser toolbar, before sharing these notes with your friends.
Overall, I’ve been pretty impressed with this new functionality. I like the way that you can quickly add snippets from a web page just by clicking the shortcut button in your browser and the ability to view notes in Expanded or List view, in the same way as you do with feeds. However, there are a couple of things that rankle with me. Firstly, once you’ve added a note it’s impossible to delete it, which means the section soon becomes clogged with information that’s no longer important or relevant.
My second gripe is perhaps a more serious one and indicates the importance Google is now placing on its expanding social networking services. Whenever you enter a new note in Google Reader it will automatically be set to ‘Shared’, so that anyone of your online pals can view it. When adding a web clipping you can simply uncheck a box to get around this problem. However, when entering a note manually, it will be shared by default, so you have to remember to go in and unshare it if it’s data of a sensitive nature. Privacy issues aside, well done to Google on another fine productivity-boosting invention.
