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Once upon a time I wrote a post about my use of Bloglines. I have to come clean. Google Reader’s latest upgrade has enticed me to change.

What’s changed?

Last time I tried to export my OPML into Google Reader from Bloglines it all ended in tears. My tears. This time the move was completely painless. The Bloglines email subscriptions and search feeds didn’t migrate, but I wouldn’t expect them to. Bloglines folder names turned up as Google Reader folder names. Google Reader folders are really tags, and you can tag one feed with many “folders.”

The Google Reader user interface has improved immensely since its introduction. Feeds load quickly and scroll smartly. FireFox 2.0 supports one-click feed subscription and there is a subscribe bookmark available. I have encountered a few user interface bugs but they have all been easily worked around. The most significant bug I found was in the “Manage Subscriptions” interface when selecting a drop down menu with a “Create New Folder…” menu item. Selecting this would bring up a text entry field off the bottom of the visible menu space giving the illusion that the UI had become unresponsive. In the past week or so this seems to have been fixed. I don’t know if it was part of the latest bugfix drive or if it’s because I’ve had a browser upgrade.

Google Reader is still missing a few of the features I like in Bloglines. For example, I haven’t found a way to see what’s changed in an updated post, but the list view and full screen mode options are worth the price of admission… err… more than the price of admission.

The original Google Reader (circa 2005) was a demonstration client application for a soon-to-be-released API. While the API hasn’t materialized yet, and Reader is still a Google Labs product (made abundantly clear with a bubbling conical flask of green goop that provides the “please wait…” animation) it feels solid and responsive. Is a formal API launch forthcoming, or are there grand plans for Reader?