Greasemonkey Unites Gmail, Google Reader

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Gmail has become pretty much omnipresent in its popularity, and Google Reader also received positive reviews after its last round of tweaks. Now, Mihai Parparita, a member of the Google Reader team, has combined the two. Users of his Greasemonkey script will be able to receive feeds in Gmail.

Parparita took a moment to explain his creation’s background and future. “Greasemonkey lets you experiment with UI concepts with minimal effort necessary,” he wrote. “I can’t really say what, if any, our integration plans are, but enough users have asked for something like this that I thought writing the script was the most expedient way to provide this (unofficial) feature.”

“Reader is in Google Labs,” Parparita noted, “and that puts it in the throw it against the wall and see what sticks’ product family . . . . 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.”

Parparita’s spaghetti has already passed a few taste tests, and earned the (informal) endorsement of Garett Rogers. “I’m happy he decided to experiment by giving Gmail tighter integration with Reader, as it’s something I have often wished existed,” Rogers posted in the Googling Google blog.

Jason Clarke of the Download Squad also approved of the Greasemonkey script, writing, “It’s very nice to have Google Reader content just a click away in my Gmail. Hopefully this becomes a full-blown integration sooner rather than later.”

The original announcement on persistent.info has already attracted forty-nine responses, most of which are extremely positive. Because of them, an official integration may well be on the way – Parparita wrote that “it’s been great to get direct, concrete indicators for what we should work on next.”

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Doug is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest eBusiness news.

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