Here’s something that drives me crazy: a blog or RSS-enabled website where the “subscribe” button/link/icon can’t be found with a cursory glance (in fact, it’s the very reason I slapped FoxNews.com with my first-ever “New Comm Road Citation” in today’s podcast).

I manage most of my RSS content in an RSS reader — in my case, that’s Bloglines. Unless there is a subscribe-to-Bloglines button, this has meant having to find the actual RSS/XML feed to paste into Bloglines when I want to subscribe to a new feed. And in cases where a blogger hasn’t made a link to that feed obvious, I’ve had to dig into the HTML source code to find it. Not necessarily difficult, but certainly a process that could be made much easier.

Enter the new-and-improved Google Reader. Thanks to glowing recommendations from two sources I trust — Mitch Joel from Twist Image and Christopher Penn from the Financial Aid Podcast — I’m giving Google Reader a serious testdrive this week, and it could very well supplant Bloglines as my RSS reader of choice.

Instead of having to hunt for RSS feeds on a blog, Google Reader has an oh-so-convenient tool that allows me simply to type in that blog’s URL (see image below). Google Reader then searches that site, “discovers” the feed, and either subscribes me right away or lists all of the available feeds to choose from at that URL. Very easy.

screen capture from Google Reader

Google Reader offers plenty of other goodies as well, and I will be exploring them all over the next few days.

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