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You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: Google Reader in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
Only eight more days, guys, until Google Reader goes poof. Have you downloaded your data yet? Have you migrated to another reader? I’ve settled in at Feedly (will be investigating Digg Reader when it launches, though) and am mostly happy there.
I’m usually pretty eager about change—it energizes me—so I’m not sure why I’ve been so grumpy about shifting away from gReader, especially since Feedly offers some features I actually like better than Reader’s. Let’s face it, I’ve been sulking ever since Reader Share got the axe. But onward, allons-y, and all that jazz.
So here’s what I like about Feedly: the granular customization it offers. I very much like being able to customize the feed view at every level: all posts, topic folders, and each individual blog.
Like this. When I click on “All” (that is, all unread posts), I like the titles-only view. You can scroll quickly down and click on any post title to expand it to reveal the full post.
You change the view by clicking one of the icons by the red arrow.
When I click on newest posts (“Today” in the sidebar) or any of my topic folders, I prefer magazine view: a thumbnail image and post excerpt.
For individual blogs, I nearly always prefer full article view. As you scroll down the page, posts are automatically marked as read. You can mark them as unread with a click. I love this—it’s faster than gReader’s mark-as-unread function was.
For a few particular blogs, especially ones whose feeds are excerpt-only, I choose card view instead—a larger thumbnail image plus post excerpt. (Sarah, I think your blog is exceptionally lovely in this view.)
It didn’t take me long to click through my feeds and customize these views; it’s just a simple click in that top right corner. I did it a little at a time, as I read through a few days’ posts.
My default start page is “Today”—you can customize that in Preferences (bottom of the sidebar). You can also select a default view for all your category and feed pages, and then tweak individual blogs later.
Another feature I love: you can click the number next to a category or blog name in the sidebar, and that marks all posts in that section as read. Gotta be careful, though; I’ve done it by accident a couple of times, meaning to click a category and marking the whole darn thing as read.
(By the way, if you don’t see your blog in the lists above, don’t be offended. I’ve probably got you squirreled away in another category. I have a filing system to rival Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler’s.)
The other thing I appreciate about Feedly is how easy it is to share links to Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms. And the bookmarking and tagging features are clutch. (Updated: Gwenda Bond just discovered all our Google Reader Starred links have been automatically migrated to Feedly’s “Save for Later” section. YES.)
You can change the colors, too! Click “Themes” at the bottom of the sidebar.
Can you see this post? I’m hearing that some folks can’t get my site to load. Has been a problem all day; we’re looking into it. I’m bumping the Ballet Shoes post yet another day until I’m sure the problem (whatever it is) has been resolved.
Meanwhile, noooooo! Google informs us Reader’s days are numbered. Those of us who rely on a good RSS aggregator to make the web manageable are crushed—there’s no better feed reader than Google Reader.
Some alternatives, none of them quite perfect (but I’m confident someone will rise to fill the void):
Feedly—this is probably what I’ll wind up using. Not quite as streamlined as Reader, but it offers many options for customizing the look and function. In “Full Articles” mode, it’s a decent Reader substitute:
(I subscribe to way more book blogs than are visible in that list. I think it only shows the top twelve.)
If you click on the gear icon, you can toggle to different layouts: mosaic, list, magazine-style, etc.
You can export your subscriptions at Google Reader and import them to Feedly, or simply connect Feedly to your Reader account, which is what I did. For now Feedly runs off Reader’s API but it is going to “seamlessly transition” to another source before Reader bites the dust in July.
A Feedly plus is that it has mobile apps as well, with syncing between your desktop, iOS, and Android devices. And if you connect it to your gReader account, it’ll sync with that, too, as long as gReader lasts.
You can share posts from Feedly directly to Facebook, Twitter, G+, Delicious, and other platforms. Diigo isn’t one of the preset share options and I really hope you can add it manually—haven’t figured out how yet but it’s early days—because Diigo is how I share links in my sidebar here. I suppose I could switch back to Delicious if I have to.
Here’s Feedly in “magazine” view:
Other options: Bloglines (what I used before Google Reader came along). NewsBlur (after a certain number of subscriptions, there’s a fee). NetNewsWire for Mac. The Old Reader. Pulp (a paid app for Mac). Flipboard for iOS devices (no good for me, as I need a desktop interface).
Following up on yesterday’s post—some good questions came up in the comments. I’ll tackle this one first: “How does the Send to Kindle app work?”
Send to Kindle
I mentioned how much I rely on Send to Kindle to read long-form posts and articles later, away from my computer. This is an official Amazon app but there are third-party equivalents, too. (See Send to Reader, below. Instapaper is another.)
In Chrome, the Send to Kindle icon appears at the top right of my browser—see the orange K?
When I’m reading a post online and I want to send it to my Kindle, all I have to do is click the icon.
If I want, I can choose to send the article to the Kindle app on an iPhone, iPad, or Android device instead. Click the icon to access the settings button. This is handy if I want to send a particular article to Scott’s device instead of mine. (You may have up to six devices connected to your Kindle account at any one time.)
Send to Reader
As I said, Send to Reader works almost the same way. You create an account, install its bookmarklet in your toolbar, and enter your Kindle’s email address. IMPORTANT: Be sure to use the free.kindle.com version of your Kindle address, i.e. [email protected], not [email protected]. This is the simplest way to avoid any download charges for the content you send. (You can also tweak your Kindle document settings to make sure you don’t accidentally download content via Whispernet, incurring data charges. Go to Amazon –> Manage Your Kindle –> Personal Document Settings and set a price limit of, say, one cent for download fees. That way, any download that would exceed that fee will be withheld until you’re connected via Wifi, where all downloads are free. Or just make a point of always using the free.kindle.com address instead!)
While you’re in your Kindle settings, be sure to enter [email protected] as one of your approved email addresses for receiving content.
This fussy set-up stuff takes much more time to describe than to do. Once you’re set up, you don’t have to bother with this ever again. From then on, you can zap articles to your Kindle by simply clicking the bookmarklet.
I believe Send to Reader works with the Kindle app on your iPad or Android device, as well. If you don’t know your device’s Kindle email address, you can find it at Manage Your Kindle –> Personal Document Settings.
Sending posts directly from Google Reader
OK, so that’s how I send long-form web content to my e-reader for perusing later. Now let’s back up half a step: say I’m reading a blog post in Google Reader—how do I send that post to my Kindle? Two ways. Either I can click through to the actual post and follow the steps above, or I can send it directly from Reader via the “Send to” button.
See the “Send to” tab at the bottom of the post? When you click on it, up pop your options. You can send this post all over the place!
Here’s how to configure the options: In Google Reader, click the Settings gear icon. Select “Reader Settings.”
Click the “Send to” tab to get to the screen pictured below.
Choose whatever sites you like to send stuff to.
You’ll notice Diigo and Send to Reader are missing from this checklist, but do appear in my list of options in the previous photo. That’s because I added them manually (again, a one-time set-up process) following the instructions under “Don’t see your favorite site?”
Click “Create a custom link” to connect with the site of your choice. Again, I think this kind of thing is harder to explain than to do. Let me know if anything here doesn’t make sense!
I should add that I really only use Google Reader’s “send to” feature to send articles to my Kindle—I seldom share links to Facebook or Twitter this way. I prefer HootSuite for that. But that is fodder for another post.
Occurs to me I forgot to share yesterday’s GeekMom post, a follow-up to recent posts here on Bonny Glen: Why Curated Content Matters.
My Diigo share widget is working quite well. It’s a satisfactory way for me to share links with others, although it lacks the reciprocity of Reader Share; you can’t comment back on my links. But please always feel free to come here to discuss anything I’ve shared, eh?
Now what I need to know is this: where are YOU sharing curated links now that your handy Reader Share button is no more?
Posted the following to Google+ but I like to archive things on my own site.
So. New Reader.
Like:
• Share-to-Google+ is easy and convenient. I imagine I’ll use it a lot. Which is, of course, what Google is angling for: driving my sharing activity to this platform. Which makes this actually a dislike, because it feels like I’m being manipulated.
Dislike:
• All the white space at the top—ordinarily I’m a fan of white space (I love the clean look of G+, for example), but in New Reader’s case, it serves to push the post text a good bit farther down the page. Means more scrolling, plus I like to start reading near the top of the screen, not a third of the way down.
• The gray folders & RSS symbols in the left column. Dark, heavy, dull.
ARGH, it’s sinking in more and more—the ramifications of Google nixing the Shared Items part of Reader. This ties in so much to what +Felicia Daywas talking about the other day regarding RSS vs stream-sharing. Sure, people can share Reader items to their G+ stream, but it means there’s no one single place you can go to READ those items. They’ll scroll by in your stream. If I want to see what, say, +Scott Petersonhas shared (not that he’s likely to because he doesn’t like the way it works now), I’ll have to click onto his profile or risk missing stuff in the stream.I mean, sure, I can do that for HIM. But for all the people whose Shared Items I enjoyed seeing daily? Most of them aren’t even on Plus. And even if they were, I can’t very well click to a bunch of different individual profiles every day.Suppose I could set up a circle for People Who Share Interesting Stuff. Just…more work, more curation.
Google, it was working beautifully before. I want a central place to read accumulated posts, not a fast-moving stream I have to swim up.
Look, I love change. New platforms make my heart go pitty-pat. (Witness my early adoption of G+ & numerous eager-beaver posts about it.)
But not if it’s backward change, change that makes more work for me, or means I’m going to lose a trove of information I found valuable.
In a comment:
Another element of my frustration is something I wrote about on Bonny Glen the other day. The stuff I shared via Reader was different from the things I share to G+, FB, Twitter. The latter tends to be newsy, informational items. The former, my Reader-share stuff, was often more personal, a lovely glimpse of someone’s day. It feels awkward and sort of invasive to push that into an info-stream.
As a result of these changes, we also think it’s important to clean things up a bit. Many of Reader’s social features will soon be available via Google+, so in a week’s time we’ll be retiring things like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader.
Well, dadgummit. I really like Google+, and I’m all for change that makes things more convenient for me, but I have loved Reader’s sharing function. I especially love the “people you follow” part. Scott routinely shares highly interesting items from his massive daily blogreading. Convenience is key: currently it requires no more effort on his part than clicking that Share button. I hope the new method is as easy—on both the sharing and reading ends.
This summer, my son and I are taking a trip to Oregon. He and I spent a ton of time online looking at hotel reviews and maps and room rates, and we finally narrowed it down to this one great looking hotel. We browsed the hotel's website for a while, and we ended up booking our stay on one of the travel aggregator sites. The next day, and for quite a while beyond that, I noticed that in my Google Reader feeds, the advertisements at the bottom of each entry were ALL FOR THAT HOTEL. In other words, the internet, or more specifically, Google, had been monitoring where I'd been browsing and had honed in on the place it thought I wanted. Google had personalized the ads just for me.
That idea is not a comfort to me.
Nor is it a comfort to Eli Pariser, who discusses this very issue in the following TED talk. Watch it and squirm:
John over at Library Clips does an amazing job of explaining just how detailed you can get using RSS aggregators to become more efficient by setting up a Getting Things Done implementation in Google Reader. It may even make your head swim a little. Me, I’m nowhere near this level of productivity, but it’s good to see someone else taking full advantage. As with all software, John is a power user and the other 99% of us will never achieve this level, but see if there are any tips (and sites) here that you can incorporate into your own routines.
Google has another tool for bloggers. Google Readerallows you to store your favorite blogs in one place and view the updated entries from them daily. On another note, I'm back on a Kinuko Craft binge. If you haven't seen her work, look here. You're in for a treat.
0 Comments on Google Reader and Kinuko Craft as of 3/13/2007 11:56:00 PM
