Google Reader has been recently integrated with Google Talk. Somewhat. If you use Google Reader and Google Talk, and you have some buddies in your Google Talk contact list, who also use Google Reader, then from now on you will be able to see each other’s shared items. Through the “Settings“, you can control who you want and don’t want to see in the “Friends’ shared items“.
This is a really nice piece of functionality. First of all, it saves you all the effort of finding and subscribing to “Shared items” RSS feeds of all your friends one by one.  Secondly, it helps to highlight interesting stuff from your buddies, even those that you might accidentally omitted from your subscriptions.
So, what am I missing there? Two things.
First, the option to rename buddies. I am blessed with contacts who choose all sorts of nicknames and avatars. I prefer real names. And I attach real face pictures to all my contacts whenever I can. And I’ve done it in my Gmail contacts. That information should be used for the Google Reader friends list.
Secondly, I need an option to enter a discussion with my friends regarding an item in my Google Reader. That can be something I have shared, or that can be something my friends shared. I want a “discuss in chat” and “discuss in email” buttons. “Discuss in email” should be, in this case, different from “Email this item”. We both (me, and the friend with who I’m entering a discussion) have read the item. We just need a reference, like a subject, and URL to the item (original article?), just in case we need to run through it again or quote something.
While the second point is harder to implement (requires user studies, interface cluttering, etc), I’m really surprised that the first one wasn’t done.