When I first tried the latest version of Google Reader, I considered making it my browser homepage, but then I discovered that it’s AJAXyness made it impossible to bookmark anything but an overview page.  I wanted to bookmark the river of news for all my subscriptions.  I poked around in the settings, but there was no preference I could set, until today.  They’ve just rolled out a small update that makes it possible to select the starting view.

Official Google Reader Blog: We made it (a little bit) better
Pick your start page: You can now select which page you’d like to see when you first log in to Reader (“Home”, “All items”, or any folder or tag). Simply go to settings and on the Preferences tab pick which one you’d like to see.

I’m liking it so far.  Though I wish it were a little smoother about loading additional items when I get to the bottom of the page.

Never let it be said that you can’t make a lot of money very quickly with an unsustainable business model. You just need a proper exit strategy, playing to the fear of older established companies is a perennial winner.
Google to buy video site YouTube for $1.65 billion – Yahoo! News

I’m researching the presence of alumni from my Alma Matter on various online social networks as part of my general interest in improving our alumni association’s effectiveness.

I’m (nominally) on Myspace, FaceBook, Livejournal, Friendster and Tribe, but I’d like to check out Orkut, but I don’t know if I know anyone who is already a member, so I’ll ask here, is there anyone who can set me up with an invite?

A month or so ago I checked out Google Reader and I wasn’t impressed. They recently released an update, so I decided to check it out.

They’ve introduced an expanded River of News style view which shows the full text of each item, which addresses my main objection about not being able to quickly scan new feed items by scrolling through the list. This is a big improvement, but it would be nice if it would show more than 20 items at a time, especially since, in my experience, it takes a noticable amount of time to load the next 20. It does autoload the next 20 as you scroll to the bottom of the page, but it still introduces an irritating little pause in my skimming experience.

The expanded view makes it worth considering, so I’m going to load the OPML reading list from my desktop reader and see how it works for me. I’ll share my impressions here.

Your honor, in the matter of Bush vs Keillor, Attorney General Gonzalez would like to present Exhibit A and moves for immediate execution of the accused for crimes against The President.

Those responsible for Fox News should be rounded up and sent to a secret prison in Syria:

Foley is, of course, a Republican. If he weren’t, do you really think so many members of the republican house leadership would have been pimping for him?

That George Orwell was really onto something.