I wish I could express how critical Google Reader is to my web design process.  How does an RSS feed reader aid my web design, you ask?

I'll tell you!

There are approximately 13.25 billion CSS design galleries currently on the world-wide interblog.  In my experience, each gallery updates their gallery with approximately 5-8 new designs every 3 days.  So, in the course of 3 days there are 60+ billion websites featured on design galleries, give or take a handful.

Obviously, I kid, but the truth is not far off.  There are a lot of CSS design galleries out there, and they are constantly adding new sites every day.  Morever, there are hundreds of really talented designers out there that have incredibly creative ideas about good web design.  

Now let's be honest: creative web design is never done is isolation.  I personally find a lot of great inspiration from others, and attempt to distill the best of what I see into my own designs.

So where does Google Reader fit into this?  Well, imagine trying to follow each of these sites (I currently follow over 108 galleries, and design-related blogs).  Live bookmarks is unthinkable.  Visiting each site would be an absolute nightmare. So I need better options.

Google Reader provides me this.  Not only can I organize my subscriptions into categories (like blogs, galleries, etc.), but I can do an expanded view on each entry that allows me to quickly view the design thumbnail before committing to a page redirect. 

I cannot begin to express how much of a time-saver this is to me.  I can quickly browse a hundred designs, weeding out duplicates, those I feel are uninspired, etc.  Plus, if there are ones that I really, really love, I can easily star it and come back to it when I need it.

Anyway, enough of that.  If you're a web designer, or even just an avid blog reader, Google Reader is pretty sweet.  Give it a look, and be sure to let me know what you think if you do!