Google Reader – Twice Rejected

Back when Google Reader first came out, I decided to check it out. After all, Google’s pretty good at online stuff. Maybe they’d nail the online RSS aggregator the first time around.

Nope.

However, I did a presentation last Friday for the BME grad students here on using PubMed with RSS, and used Google Reader as an example online reader. In the process, I ended up trying it out again. It was looking much better than last time. The interface for reading feeds on my Treo is great as well. However, it still has one fatal flaw.

Yesterday, Amanda asked me about a LiveJournal post she had made. Amanda’s LiveJournal, like mine, is now “friends-only” and requires authentication to access the feed. I hadn’t seen her post. In fact, I hadn’t seen any LJ posts from friends-only journals all weekend. It turns out that Google Reader still doesn’t support authenticated feeds. I tried faking it out with TinyURL and a Yahoo! pipe thing that someone made, to no avail. Back to Gregarius I go.

It’s really too bad. I loved the updated Google Reader interface. However, until they allow authenticated feeds, I can’t migrate.