New Google Reader Features

I have been waiting a while for some of the features in the latest update from Google Reader. Sometimes I find a blog that I am not subscribed to that I want to share with my Google Reader friends. This was not easy before as I had to send them individually a link to the article online. Now, through the new features, I can just add the article to my Google Reader from a bookmarking option. This makes it easy to share the article with my friends. Also, with the new features, they have added a way to send notes with your Reader friends. You can either share a note with your friends as a group, or you can share a post and attach a note with it saying why you have shared this particular article. Find it here on the notes page. Also, they have added a way to incorporate a theme into your shared items feed. This is interesting option maybe stemming from the recent release of artist themes for iGoogle. Lastly, they have implemented a way to distinguish from your own items and shared items within your All Items page on Reader. This will help when you find yourself wondering how you got the item in the first place.

All this is well enough for Google Reader. I use the service probably second most to Gmail. I would still like to see integration into Gmail as the services have similar schemes and style of use.