New Google Reader!

Once again, one my favorite companies has managed to deliver another great update to one of their already-fantastic free applications, and not screw it up. In this case, my favorite Google application, Google Reader, received a bit of a facelift last night. Gone are the rounded corners of the reading area and navigation groups. Item option icons (at the bottom of each news item) are now much more pleasing to the eye, and the whole interface is basically a bit more compact and space-efficient. Friend's shared items get their own navigation group, and each nav group is now collapsible, which I'm diggin' in a major way (I have a lot of subscriptions, so this means a lot less scrollin' around!). Overall, it just feels a heckuvalot more "polished."

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but Reader has changed the way I use the web. Really. I'm not puffing this up in any way. If Google were to take my precious Reader away, I would be really, really, really unhappy.

Not to be left out, the iPhone version of Reader got a little touchup as well, which was a great surprise to me as I was sure they wouldn't touch it, as it was basically re-created from scratch just a few months ago. To my delight, they updated that as well, passing on the new item icons and button styling to my beloved Mobile Reader.

Thanks Goog!

(More about it on Reader's official blog: Square is the new round.)