Reader seemed to only sporadically get updates from twitter before I got my own twitter account.

I think Google should improve its Google reader to check its content whether is up-to-date or not as I am a feed reader. I seldom go to check whether the feed is update or not. So, Google reader must check for me. Or try it in another way, always press the refresh button or r button to make sure it always up-to-date.

Good tip (and thanks for the VB love) :)

So if you refresh and Google grabs a some new items, will everyone else get the new items too auto-magically? That would be nifty.

Thanks for that button - sometimes Google Reader seems to have problems and I need to refresh the whole list of feeds and this button is very helpful.

If you have the sidebar open just clicking on "subscriptions" at the top of your feeds tree also refreshes.

Actually, clicking the refresh button does not check for new items, but merely refreshes your screen view:

http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?answer=70642&topic=12011

@Anonymous:
The tip is from Google Reader's official Twitter page and it actually works, so the help page you're linking above is outdated.

Does anyone know WHY Reader is having this error? I've been wrestling with this for a few days making sure my own feed will actually go out to people (novel idea huh?).

I just tried refresh, and indeed, it brought up two of my recent posts.

Is Google working on this issue? Is there a fix coming? I don't think most people know to refresh, as most of my other subscriptions come in with no problems.

That's not working for me, and the official site seems to suggest that the Refresh button does not actually retrieves new items:

http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70642

"Note that clicking the Refresh button in Google Reader does not cause it to actually check your subscriptions for new items. It simply updates your screen with any new items that Google Reader may have already collected."

Read the post more carefully and notice that you need to click on an individual subscription before refreshing.