Google Reader Notifier’s developer Troels Bay has been busy. Since I last posted about his menubar utility for Google’s newfeed reader just over a week ago, he’s updated it twice.

The newest version (0.37) released today adds a “Mark all as read” option to the drop-down menu, puts newest articles on the top of the list and adds an icon to show when your connection to Google Reader is lost.

The previous update, earlier in the week, added the ability to turn off the sound notification and the option to display between five and fifty items in the menu.

Google Reader Notifier is free, open-source and avilable from Troels’ web site .google reader, rss, newsfeed, menubar, productivity, news, not apple mail, not mail.app

The third-party Menubar utility for Google’s news reader, Google Reader Notifier, has been updated with a few nifty new features and the removal of a bug in its version check feature.

The new version (0.22) sports a new icon, adds an option to view the number of unread articles in the Menubar, and has a redesigned menu layout that matches the general Gmail Notifier style. It now also makes a sound (“ping!”) when new articles appear just like the Gmail notifier.

At the same time, a bug that prevented it from properly auto-checking for new versions has been fixed.

It’s not enough to tempt me away from the excellence of NetNewsWire , but it might help Google Reader users stay on top of things more efficiently.

Google Reader Notifier is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .google reader, gmail, news, RSS, menubar, notification, productivity

Troels Bay has just released a menubar notification utility for Google’s RSS Reader which matches the other Google app menubar notification apps for Gmail and Google Calendar.

The drop-down menu offers the ability to jump into the Reader, to preview the subject lines of articles in your Google Reader feed, or to check for updates manually.

Clicking on a previewed subject line takes you to the original web page rather into Google Reader. A nice touch.

A Preference pane lets you set the period for automatic updates and to restrict notification to articles with a particular label.

You can also choose the level of security you are comfortable with:

Google Reader Notifier is a universal binary, freeware and available from Troel’s web site .google reader, RSS, menubar, notification, not apple mail, productivity