Google Reader app for Android Updated

Mountain View-based Internet giant Google announced on Wednesday a new, updated version of the official Google Reader application for handsets running under Android.

The new flavor of the mobile software was packed with some of the most-requested features over the past few months, including Unread count widget, News ticker widget, or Mark previous as read.

However, some other features were included into the mix as well, such as an official Russian translation, Google notes in a post on their Google Mobile Blog.

With the new Unread count widget, users are offered the possibility to select any feed, label, person, or 'all items', and put the unread count straight on their home screens. When clicking on the widget, the user it taken directly to the specific stream.

With the News ticker widget, one would receive more information on the feeds. This is a larger size widget that would enable people cycle through items on any stream they would like in Reader.

In order to go to a specific article, one would have to click on a headline. To get to the stream, the user would need to click on the appropriate folder.

Mark previous as read is another feature newly added to the Google Reader app for Android. The feature itself is not that new, as it was previously present with the application, but Google decided to remove it at one point, and now they included it again in the list of available options.

With this feature, users would be able to easily mark as read items in the reading list. As they scroll down that list, hitting the “Mark previous as read” option would make the said change to all items above.

The application is up for download in all countries where the Android Market is available. The Google Reader app is compatible with all mobile phones powered by Android 1.6 or higher. The widgets can be used on handsets running under Android 2.2+.