Google Reader adds Notes

Google Reader, by all accounts the most superior feed-reader on the web, has just become even more useful.

What’s the addition that’s making me all excited? It is, of course, notes! Now, this may not sound like a big deal, but in a little way, it is!

See, Google Reader not only provides a nice interface for you to enjoy your daily aggregator-run, it also lets you share certain items with friends or the world (which, if you’re Scoble, is the same thing). Up until now, you needed to be subscribed to the whole feed in order to share single items. But with the notes bookmarklet, whenever you add any posting or website you stumble upon by appending a note, you can also share that item.

For people like me, who not only use the sharing function, but also add their shared items via the feed to their tumblelog, this is a fantastic way to consolidate something I would usually have to either add manually or facilitate via the usage of yet another imported feed. If you know what I’m talking about.

In addition to the notes function, the GReader team has also added three additional themes to style the page that displays your public shared item. The offered themes are a bit, well, off, so I guess they are more a proof of concept than anything else. But see for yourself, in this announcement on the official Google Reader blog (which is the easy way out for someone who just can’t be bothered to actually take screenshots).