Now that Google Reader has been redesigned, it is much more user friendly, and operates more like a mix between Bloglines, del.icio.us and GMail than the old Google feed aggregator they were offering, user demand is increasing to mash Google Reader into GMail.
Heck, even Yahoo Mail now allows RSS Feed aggregation to be implemented under one roof, and doesn’t it make sense to have the option of integrated informational communication from friends, contacts and blogs in one Google offering?
Well now Greasemonkey has come up with a new script which lets Google Account Holders do just that, merge Google Reader with their GMail.
From the post, Google Reader Redux:
Reader is in Google Labs, and that puts it in the “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” product family. I’m glad that people seem to have realized that this “throwing” and “seeing” are less passive than they sound. To stretch this metaphor further, if the spaghetti starts to slide off, engineers (and UI designers, and product managers, and others) will study the problem and figure out how to increase its coefficient of friction. Usually the changes are more subtle (witness the myriad of tweaks that have been done to the Google Video homepage) which is perhaps why there is this perception that no post-launch changes are made.
A lot of people have remarked on the similarities between the new Reader interface and Gmail’s. With this in mind, I’ve created a simple Greasemonkey script that adds a “Feeds” in Gmail. When clicked, Reader’s list view is loaded on the right. To install the script (and Greasemonkey if you have never used it before):
* Install Greasemonkey from http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
* Restart Firefox.
* Click on the script link above
* Click on the “Install” button that’s displayed in the upper-right corner of the page.
* Visit/reload Gmail
