Regular Google Reader user know how addictive the web application can be and how important it becomes to be on top of new unread items. This little plugin give you control of the online news reader from your desktop, thanks to Growl.

Reader Notifier is accessible from your menu bar, where it will show the number of unread items you have. Open up the drop down menu and you'll be able to access your Reader, refresh unread items or add a new feed. This last option is great, since it lets you add any new RSS link you might find, without having to open up Google Reader every time.

Reader Notifier includes Growl support, which is a nice way of keeping up to date with unread items. You can also choose to block items you don't want to see. If you want to save yourself the hassle of even simply visiting Google Reader, you can also set up Reader Notifier as your default RSS reader in your browser preferences.

The application also features TorrentCasting, which may be lesser known and not as clear for many users, but can actually come to be quite useful. TorrentCasting allows you to keep up to date with media in RSS feeds such as torrents, podcasts or videocasts. It'll attach the file to the feed, making it immediately accessible to you from the menu bar.

Reader Notifier works fine most of the time, however it has been known to show some random number in the menu bar when you have too many items.

Despite this minor bug, Reader Notifier is a smart way of controlling all your Google Reader feeds from your desktop.