Given how most content applications work, I would have suspected to be able to set a preference to get Google Reader’s default way of marking items read, not the other way around.

In the end, I believe the choice between the two (or the choice of how to read content) becomes a matter of preference. I suppose I am too ingrained in Bloglines to make the jump to another way of reading that, while similar, is different enough to cause me some cognitive dissonance.

Making me click to tell you I read something just slows me down. The Bloglines model is better. Loading content is marking it read.

Its an option in the Google reader. Set it and forget it. I agree that I would never want to click on an item to mark it “read”. Read is read. But don’t blame Google ‘cos you didn’t set the options to match your preferences.

After using Bloglines for a long, long time, then Google Reader for a few days (it quickly got irritating,) I have finally settled on Flock (http://flock.com/). Not an online reader, and it has a few quirks of its own, but I am still finding it a very fast way to track a lot of feeds, not to mention great for gathering bloggable info and as a blog editor. And, No, I have no connection with the Flock project other than as a pretty happy beta user ;-)

I still really do not like the disappearing content in the Google Reader. Just because I click on it doesn’t mean I am done reading.