Weblog
Oct 3, 04:28 pm: Living with Google Reader
I dabble in RSS readers. I periodically download new ones and try them out — moving subscriptions from one to the other.
I’ve been using Google Reader for the last few weeks and now feel qualified to share some of the things I like and don’t like about it.
I use Google Reader in a pretty straightforward way. I have the subscribe button on my browser link bar (see the “Goodies” section under settings if you are a user) and subscribe as I surf. I have things set up to just display latest postings. So, I just space-bar through and read postings. Starring anything I want to read more. Then I sort by my starred items, and see if I want to bookmark or blog about something that I read. As I make the decision on a given item, I remove the star as a part of the action I take.
(I’m assuming that you have some familiarity with Google Reader. If you don’t, Google’s help is pretty helpful)
Pros:
- Sorts subscriptions. Okay, it’s a stupidly basic tool but I need a variety of ways to sort my subscriptions. In Reader, it’s easy for me to tag subscriptions and then they are sorted by folders. It’s mixing the metaphor (hasn’t it always been tags vs. folders?) but it works for me.
- Handles a lot of data. I have ~500 subscriptions which results in thousands of new items. It doesn’t choke on those.
- Offline capacity. Almost any tool is useless to me if it doesn’t also give me a way to work offline. Okay, we can pretend the whole ubiquitous wifi thing but, especially if you aren’t forking out to connect, it isn’t ubiquitous yet. And I don’t want to manage subscriptions and tools across a variety of sites.
- Stable. I haven’t had a problem connecting or using the site.
- Keystroke enabled. I don’t like have to use the mouse on quick information tools (RSS readers and emails are both things I like to prowl through very quickly). Reader makes it easy for me to take actions — mark as read, star, unstar, tag — from the keyboard which is a key to speed.
Cons:
- It isn’t fast enough. I like desktop applications. They are faster. They handle more faster. The good ones anyway. There I’ve said it. The Internet is a lot of beautiful things but when my goal is go through a big chunk of info quickly, the desktop is my friend.
- No way to create smart feeds. I want to create searches of my feeds so that somethings can rise to the top of the pile and I want to do it inside of my primary tool. I can search but I can’t subscribe to that search in something like its own feeds.
- I don’t really like the interface. I prefer Bloglines. I don’t have a good reason for this. It just is. Something about it makes me lose track of who I’m reading more than in other RSS readers. Does anyone else have this experience? Is there a way to describe it or is it just me?
What do you think? Do use Google Reader? How’s it working for you?
Some related links:
- RSStocracy Good general overview of RSS to help you get started
- Rich RSS Readers: Best of Breed Picks It’s over a year old but still good.
tagged: rss, tools, google, reader, review,
Jun 13, 06:36 pm: Feed reader comparison
If you aren’t using a feed reader, you should be. Rich RSS Readers: best of breed picks is a terrific resource in helping you choose the tools.
If you don’t know why you should us RSS readers, check out RSStocracy.
(via afeedisborn.com)
tagged: rss, readers, tools, comparison
Jun 13, 06:29 pm: Is a blog the right thing to start?
Ruby, who knows more about blogging a community than almost anyone I know, shares some great advice in “So you wanna start a local politics blog”: http://lotusmedia.org/so-you-wanna-start-a-local-politics-blog. As I read it, though, I wondered is a blog the best thing to start.
I mean, Ruby talks about the fact that Orange Politics is not trying to be a newspaper. As she says, they are ”...not trying to be objective or journalistic.”
But still, it seems that there is a lot of information out there about almost any location. Go ahead: plug your city into the search on flickr, del.icio.us, or technorati. You’re going to find a lot.
There’s a role, I think, for organizing the information that is already available. It’s not easy enough yet — it’s about cut-and-pasting or learning about tools like Drupal. More and more, I’m thinking that this step — information aggregation and organization — is the step that comes before blogging.
tagged: blogging, information, aggregation, issues,
May 24, 05:00 am: PubSub is even more useful than I'd realized
I haven’t actually logged on to PubSub in a while. Uh. Wow. It’s not just their feed searches (and the way that you can subscribe to them). Check out the PubStats. Very nice stuff letting you see when and where traffic is coming from.
technorati tags: pubsub, stats, service, rss, monitor, tools
Mar 9, 06:03 am: Speaking of FeedBurner
Marshall Kirkpatrick has a terrific post on the use of FeedBurner.
tagged: nptech, rss, feedburner, stats
Mar 9, 05:53 am: Make your own feed
I just used FeedYes to successfully make feeds for the TechSoup Forums. Nice!
tagged: techsoup, nptech, tools, rss, diy,
Mar 7, 05:02 pm: How do you know who's reading your feeds?
One of the questions (waves at Seth) I get asked with some regularity. Feedburner is one of the best answers. And it’s gotten better:
Our crack design team has emerged from their cave with a sweeping set of enhancements to our core statistics offering. There are some new concepts, more detailed visibilty into specific item statistics, and a simpler means of navigating between feed-level and item-level metrics.
(via www.niallkennedy.com)
tagged: feedburner, statistics, feeds, nptech, net2,
Feb 23, 02:05 pm: Bloglines and del.icio.us guide
Just stumbled onto this terrific bloglines and del.icio.us guide from ONE/Northwest. It’s particularly nice that they’ve pointed to files that their clients (environmental activitists) would find helpful as they dip their toes into the river of news.
(via beth.typepad.com)
tagged: onenorthwest, environmentalist, newssources, rss, bloglines, howto
Sep 15, 04:26 am: How about a nonprofit related application?
Newsgator is having an API Developer Competition. From their announcement:
NewsGator Technologies, Inc., the leading RSS platform company, today announced that the company is hosting a competition, open to developers around the world, to see who can develop the most cutting edge application using the NewsGator Online API that was recently made available to the public.
So what can be built that can be over specific interest to nonprofits?
Any ideas?
tagged: nptech, developers, newsgator, contest
Aug 10, 05:21 pm: Getting Google news onto your site
From ONE/Northwest, Google News Launches RSS Feeds. The post provides a terrific example for using this service.
