October 31, 2011
Well, they did it. They killed the best part about Google Reader.
In case you haven't already listened to me rant about it, the thing they took away was the reason that AE died down. Instead of having a list of things your friends shared in Reader and giving you the ability to comment on those posts right then and there, you have to sort through Google+ and find the things that your friends shared. This wouldn't be a problem really, but I often kept things unread in my Shared list for the very purpose of reading it later (often because I was at work and didn't have time to read something very long). How am I supposed to keep these longer reads (or videos of sports injuries) so I can watch them later? You can't mark something as unread in Google+. There doesn't appear to be an icon telling you when someone commented on something your friend shared. Now I guess you'd have to make a Reader circle in Google+ and then go back to look for any comments you might be interested in reading. God damn it.
So jonthegeek pointed out a workaround. If you create an empty circle in Google+ and name it Reader Unread or something like that you can share posts you want to keep to just that circle. Then when you want to read them and mark them as read you can delete the posts. Not quite as slick as it was in Reader, but functional. He apparently does this as a way to tag things, too, so he has a work unread circle, Android tips circle, etc.
Also, if you have an Android phone, sharing to Google+ is an option from anywhere you can share so you can save things like Twitter posts or webpages.
Where's the Like button for this post? Who can I complain to about this?
Oh, dammit.
+1
Is AE rising from the ashes of GReader? Personally, I don't like the look of the redesign, seems to be lots of empty space, I get fewer feeds showing up on my screen at any one time, feeds take longer to load, my shift+A doesn't seem to be working properly, and the grey/black contrast between read/unread is nearly indecipherable on my monitor.
I don't think I understand what the empty circle in G+ is supposed to solve. It won't help me see the items that my friends shared that I previously would have easily noticed. Is the idea to look at what my friends shared and then re-share that into my empty circle if I want to read it later?
Yes, the empty circle is to keep things to read later. You can use it for pretty much anything in Google+ or anything that you can share on your phone. Then just delete it from the empty circle once you've gone back to read it. You could also do this with Delicious or something like that if Google+ isn't your thing.
http://webtrickz.com/quickly-share-any-webpage-to-your-google-stream-chrome-extension-bookmarklet/
Looks like someone forgot about including the HTML tags in his post. Hopefully any AE upgrade will include some better HTML tools. Until then, pretend you are writing your webpage in Notepad!
Didn't forget. Just lazy.
+1 :: natedogg at 10:57AM CST on November 01
@pablo: Perhaps I should have asked what Shift+A does before actually pressing those keys while reading my current backlog.
@pablo: Perhaps I should have asked what Shift+A does before actually pressing those keys while reading my current backlog.
If you are looking into the keyboard shortcuts (which I highly recommend) you can press ? and it will bring up a quick menu of all the available shortcuts. I apparently was not utilizing this to its full potential before as I was not using the jumping commands before (unless those are new).
Also on my wishlist for an upgraded AE is a posting bookmarklet/chrome extension. I'll discuss with mrflip tonight at bowling what is possible/easy and what might be below the pony line.
You know what this site needs? A mobile app. Anybody looking for a fun coding project? Anyone looking for a fun coding project that will arbitrarily and suddenly be broken if the site framework is ever updated?
@zieglerfe: sorry
Here's a possibly answerable question. If you go to the Reader settings page (from the gear up in the upper right corner), there is a tab that says "Send To". You can enable a passel of sites like digg and twitter and it will put a "share to" button at the bottom of each post where the "Share with friends" used to be. Then, there is the "Create a Custom Link" option. Does anyone know how this works? Could a custom link be created for any site? How about a site that runs on ye olde MetaPhilter engine?
If:
Evernote
Name: Evernote
URL: http://s.evernote.com/grclip?url=${url}&title=${title}
Icon URL: http://www.evernote.com/favicon.ico
Google+
Name: Google+
URL: https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/confirm?hl=en&url=${url}
Icon URL: https://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/favicon.ico
and:
${source}The source of the item
${title}The title of the item
${url}The URL of the item
${short-url}A shortened URL that redirects to the item
Perhaps we can come up with something.
@pablo: I can see what people are sharing, but I can't comment or anything.
In other news, it seems that my Alkaline Earth and Alkaline Earth Comments feeds are seeing some activity these days.
They seemed to have brought back the Share button (shares to Google+) and the corresponding keyboard shortcut (shift+s). I haven't tried it out yet and I assume the only difference between this and the +1 button is that you aren't publicly giving it a +1. You can just share to whatever circle you want.
Still kind of annoyed that there isn't an unread count or something of unread shared items or a way to keep things unread. There has been a decrease in shared items from the top sharers - mrflip, jonthegeek, zieglerfe, and one of my friends from college.
You can't share with note from the mobile browser version of Reader anymore (without opening the link and using the android share interface), so it's too much work now for me to bother most of the time. Plus sharing to g+ sucks compared to sharing to Reader, of course.
Fixed:
1) Load Reader
2) Click Subscribe.
3) Paste in this URL: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q="@aeshares"
4) Click "Add"
5) Go to "Reader Setting" in the gear icon thingy.
6) Click "Send To"
7) Click "Create a custom link" at the bottom.
* Name: AE Shares
* URL: https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=@aeshares ${title} ${short-url}
8) Click Save
When you want to share something from Reader, click "Send To," then "AE Shares." That'll load the twitter updater thingy with "@aeshares" then the name of the thing you're sharing then a shortened URL to the thing you're sharing.
You can also use "Share to... Tweetdeck" (or whatever Twitter client you use) from an Android phone and type "@aeshares" to put it into that feed.
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What do we do now?
posted by zieglerfe at 11:45PM CST on October 31