Previously I wrote about Google Calendar and Gmail improvements, here and here respectively. In this post I gives more product ideas for Google Reader and iGoogle (Seriously why doesn’t Google have a URL like http://igoogle.com or http://igoogle.google.com for it ?? Thats the first thing someone would try the moment they hear Google has launched… err re-branded something to “iGoogle”):
Google Reader
search and auto-filter: Search has been the most asked feature for all GReader users out there. I’d like to see a general blogosphere search (similar to Google Blog Search) built into GReader and a search box specific to the feeds I subscribe too. The auto-filter feature would enable me to save some wildcard searches that would remove matching entries. This would be great since for example I hate reading blog entries about everyone’s del.icio.us bookmarks etc.
- Easy “mark read”: I treat my feed entries in GReader like emails in Gmail. But sadly GReader lacks the archive capability. I’d like to see a easy (one-click) way of marking entries as “don’t read”. These are entries I don’t want to open (since after reading the one line snippet I know that its not worth my time), but don’t want to make the effort of opening them and hence marking them as read. Cause of the sheer slowness of this process (and the fact that I don’t want to mark things as having been read, when its not the case) what ends up happening is that I have a bunch of entries that are unread and clutter my view 
- Better auto-sort: I know this feature is sort of in beta, so I’d like to make a few suggestions on how to improve it. So whats wrong with it? The relevance of this feature is for the top 10-20 posts only. Beyond that it starts clustering posts from the same feed in some random cluster size of 4-8 posts. Visually seeing such a pattern, anyone can realize its far from intelligent. I’m sure the GReader team is thinking of using the page rank/starring/subscription/read count of feeds/feed entries etc. to come up with some kind of ranking (apart from posting frequency which I don’t think is the best measure; at least not when its used in isolation). If they can implement the “mark read” feature mentioned above, then they would have an additional measure to use and the read count spurious behavior (I manually mark all del.icio.us entries as “read” to force them to go away) would go away too
- Add to Google: My experience with adding feeds to GReader is less than ideal. For example clicking on the “Add to Google” button on the Official Google Blog leads users to this page. Now the problem with this page is clicking on “Add to Google Reader” actually opens up GReader again (again cause I usually already have it opened). I’d rather make this adding procedure quick and snappy with the ability to add labels etc. and a link to GReader. I usually add new feeds cause my readings on GReader lead me to one, hence the situation where I already have an instance of GReader open.
iGoogle
- Variable width/height for each category: Giving the ability to widen/shrink the width/height of widgets would be great. For example I have 24″ monitors at work and my stock module (which Google calls “stuff”!) has the stock ticker and price/moment etc. too far apart.
- Mobile Version issues: I like the fact that iGoogle has a mobile version. I have 3 issues with it though. One being the fact that I can only add a limited set of modules to my mobile version. Secondly any module I want to add to my mobile version of iGoogle needs to be on my web version too…. for example I don’t want a GReader module on my web version, but on my mobile one!? Lastly I’d prefer not having pagination on the mobile version… or at least not after 3-4 modules only. When I want a quick glance at all my modules, I don’t really want to make an additional click to get to my other modules (mobile interfaces/data speeds are not conducive to excessive user interaction).