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Be it: Google Reader is my CMS (and so can you!)
Published on 06/01/08
by Zac Echola
Some people have asked me how I can maintain so much presence online, yet get so much work done or have time for anything else. (secret: I’m online a lot more than I should be).
Another secret: I like to think of myself as an information traffic cop. I take in a ton of information via RSS and love rerouting feeds for personal and professional uses. From my reader as of this post:
From your 117 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 4,116 items, starred 44 items, shared 115 items, and emailed 1 items.
Granted, most of those “reads” come from photos on flickr, ffffound and several other photo blogs. Another large chunk comes from hypem.com and I don’t listen to all the music. But still. That’s a ton of information coming and going.
Reader has cool features beyond simply reading content. Out of the box, you can share items with Google Talk friends, email and mashup feeds and items into personal tagging structures and create new RSS feeds based on those mashups. With or without knowing it, you create a personal, searchable database of everything you’re subscribed to, which by the way, comes in super handy when you’re like me. (I don’t remember everything, rather vague pieces of information I recall completely through personal database searching).
Anyway, here’s a fun project using only Google Reader, Firefox and some easy to install Greasemonkey scripts. We’re going to turn Reader into a multi-platform CMS (Content Management System). Basically, think AP Exchange, but you control the the incoming feeds and there’s no copy/paste to export to a platform.
Our platforms will be a link blog, Facebook, twitter, del.icio.us and a tumblr blog.
If you don’t have Firefox with Greasemonkey installed, go get Firefox, install it and then add the Greasemonkey plug in. If you don’t have a Google account, sing up for one. You don’t necessarily need Facebook, twitter, del.icio.us and/or tumblr accounts, but get them (free!) so you can follow along.
Fire up firefox and install these scripts at userscripts.org:
Treader (allows you to post to del.icio.us and twitter from Reader)
Tumblr on Google Reader (allows you to post to your tumblr blog from Reader)
Facebook Sharer + Google Reader (allows you to share items from Reader to Facebook)
In Reader, use the Add subscription tool on the left to, well, add subscriptions. Do a search for your favorite baseball team. Or your favorite newspaper. Most likely you’ll find some stuff you’ll want to read and stuff you’ll want to share.
Once you start importing feeds, you’ll see some buttons at the bottom of each item, allowing you to add a star, share, email, add tags, share to Facebook and share on tumblr.
Clicking the star button works just the same as in Gmail. You can also create a public feed specifically for starred items under settings (and also for any tags you create).
The share button will feed your friends in Gtalk and your link blog new items (don’t worry if you don’t know the address to your link blog, click shared items in the left bar and Google will tell you). If you read something that audience might enjoy, just press Shift + S and Google will do the magic for you. Easy.
More shortkeys: Press ‘j’ to move forward an item in the list, ‘k’ to move back. There are other shortkeys by tying in ‘?’.
While you can always search Reader for an item later, searching all your feeds can be messy. Treader does some cool things. Let’s say you want to bookmark an item via del.icio.us or know some people in your network that might enjoy the item. Press Shift + D. Enter your username, log in and there’s your del.icio.us pop up window. As if you were right on the page, using the del.icio.us plug in.
Treader works similarly for Twitter, too. Shift + T will give you a little Java window to edit the tweet. By default it prompts with the item’s title and a link. Easy.
Shift + T conflicts with the tumblr integration, so we’re going to get into some code to fix that.
In Firefox click Tools > Greasmonkey > Manage User scripts. Select Tumblr on Google Reader and click the Edit button. A text file with some code should show up. Don’t get freaked out, we’re just making a quick change. Find this chunk of code:
keyForAction: ‘T’
and change it to:
keyForAction: ‘B’
This will fix any conflicts with Treader and Tumblr. Select an item and press Shift + B at any time to bring up the Share on tumblr window. You can also just click the image to bring this window up.
I know that with tumblr you can select up to five feeds to automatically pull in, but I have somewhat of a problem using a catch all feed for that. I used to feed all my starred items to It’s Randomonium, but have since stopped, since tumblr’s true beauty relies on posting different item types (audio, text, quote, photo, etc.). I like to keep those options available.
Last but not least, if you still have items you’d like to share with people on Facebook, just mash the button and follow the prompts.
Think about that. You’ve just interacted with several sites without ever leaving Google Reader. If you’re a fast keyboard jockey, you could fly through your feeds, sharing items left and right.
The end. Or is it?
Please leave a comment so I know what you think about this post. After that, check out It's randomonium! Or, if you're so inclined, take a gander at what I'm reading and my del.icio.us links.
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Tags: programming without programming