Google Reader

Shared Items

A quick note to publicize my Google Reader Shared Items feed URL: http://feeds.justagwailo.com/justagwailo/shared. It uses FeedBurner and its MyBrand service which lets you use your a subdomain of your own domain for feeds. (It's a little weird that you have to email to sign up, since it should be an automatic process where you click a button then set your DNS to point to feeds.feedburner.com, but at least, as which Rogers Cadenhead correctly argues, it prevents lock-in to the FeedBurner service.) Right now it's only my shared items directly from Google Reader. I'd like in the future for it to include my 'dugg' items at Digg, my Flickr and YouTube 'favorite' photos and videos, respectively, and if there was a feed for it, my MetaFilter and Ask MetaFilter 'favorite' posts and comments. Just Google Reader items for now, though, as it's the easiest to setup while letting me add to it later.

Please let me know if you have feedback on the shared items. Too much of one thing and not enough of another? I subscribe to about a hundred feeds, which isn't close to those whose shared items I subscribe to. If I have comments about an article, I'll either socially bookmark it or blog about it, but at least this is a low-threshold way to say "this is interesting for some reason" without giving that reason.

Inattention Data: Requesting a Skipped Items Feature for Google Reader

After months of fidelity to NetNewsWire, the excellent news reader for the Mac, I'm switching back to Google Reader. The reasons for getting drawn back include peer pressure (everybody's doing it) and the social features (the 'Share' button beneath every item), as well as not requiring a manual refresh. The automated refresh makes it harder to reflect, but that's what leaving your computer at work is for. Google Reader still needs authenticated feed support, but at least in my case the only stuff requiring a password is work-related, and I appreciate that the separation between the browser to a desktop application leads to separation between work and play, something I value more than I let on. I also like subscribing to people's shared items, so other than Darren Barefoot and Kevin Marks, could you please publicize the link for me to paste in? (Especially interested in reading the perspective non-white or non-dude peopel, or both, since my reading list is currently at 100% gwai lo.) I'd love to know what my readers are reading.

(What about my URL? I'm afraid it's going to change at some point in the future so naturally I'm working on an overwrought solution to that.)

Talking to Darren about his shared items, he reminded me of the 'Trends' section, which shows what you've read as opposed to marked as read. After about 3,000 entries (over slightly less than a week), it looks like I read pretty much everything that crosses my path. This is most certainly not true. The number is closer to %50, if that. I'd love to know what I see but don't read, much like how in iTunes I can (but don't) know what songs I'm likely not to listen to after hearing the first bit. iTunes keeps track of which songs were skipped, and if there were a way to tell Google Reader "yup, saw it, don't care" then I can get stats on what I'm paying inattention to. Over lunch, Mark noted that Google reader marks as read things that you've passed, and suggested Google Reader could flag as 'seen-but-not-read' any item that you spent less than 2 seconds—or whatever—looking at. That probably won't work for most intense information consumers, nor will it work for me, simply because there are photos and take me about 2 seconds to see and "read" and maybe there's a post with one sentence that contained significant wit and brevity that it took me less than the alloted time to consume.