The Google Reader app for Android is streamlined, slick and easy to use. It performs one function and it does it well: reading your RSS feeds.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when the app updated today with some additional useful features.

Firstly, two new widgets have been added, one to show the unread count and one to display new stories in a news ticker format. The unread count widget can be set to show the number of unread stories in a feed, label, person or on all your items. The news ticker widget scrolls through any of the RSS feeds in Reader. Clicking on a headline will take you directly to that article. Unfortunately, the widgets only appear to work on Android 2.2 or above.

Secondly, the app now "marks previous feeds as read" as you scroll through them. This is a very useful feature on the Google Reader mobile website and I'm glad it has been ported to the app.

[qr]com.google.android.apps.reader[/qr]

Credit: Phandroid