Okay, I confess upfront to being a Google fanboy. How can I not be when they get so many things right.
Here’s one more thing I just discovered that has made my day:
Google Reader
I use Google Reader to keep track of all the blogs that I read on a regular basis. I have a number of tags ranging from bioinformatics to edublogs to math and science. My most populated category is my Personal tag which has blogs of friends and even the facebook status updates. I was just complaining the other day that I don’t really ever see what is going on at a persons actual site. The way that Google Reader works (and just about any RSS feed reader works) is that it periodically checks a particular feed (which is just a text file in xml format). If there is new data, say a new entry, it is downloaded into the reader and I can go through a read all new blog entries.
There are two problems with this system that I wanted a nice, elegant solution to. The first is that I never actually see the blogger’s page because only the content is downloaded. Some pictures are download and some embedded videos will play but not always. Plus I’d like to see the design of the sign. It helps me to associate with the blogger who I am reading. In any reader, you can click on the name of the blog entry or even the title of the blog and visit their website directly. But this is a hassle because then you have to go back and forth between the blog and the reader. I’m kind of a one track mind so I often get lost.
In comes the Google Reader goodies. Under Google Reader, you can go into Settings and click Goodies. I have been using a bookmarklet to subscribe to new blogs. I just discovered a new bookmarklet that I can place on my toolbar called “Next>>”. When clicked this will take you to the next unread blog at the original site. No going back and forth. You can even customize using different links for different tags. So I could have a “Next>>” for my bioinformatics tag and a separate one for my personal tag. Each time it just takes me to the next unread entry in the feed.
Google Docs
I’m trying out Google Docs as a method for posting to my blog. If this is all screwy, it is because this is my first attempt. See here for more details: Publishing Google docs to your blog.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:10 am
You might find Alertle (www.alertle.com), another RSS reader, to be more simpler and faster. Has wider support for videos, podcasts.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I’m a big google fan myself, I use reader and noticed I didn’t have your site fed into it…shame on me.
I couldn’t use Docs for blog postings, didn’t care for it much. Started using Windows Live Writer though…love it. Has a portable version too that I use at work.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I totally agree. Something is screwy with the Google Docs post to the Wordpress API. There is no way to set the title. It appears you have to go in afterwords and change the title, but then the link to the page is not consistent with the title. It’s all messed up.
I’ve been using LiveWriter for several months now and can’t go back to anything else. I love the copy and pasting of images, with drop shadows or picture stylings. Very nice!!