Yesterday I started a 3-part series on how Google Reader’s imminent closure is forcing me out of my comfort zone, to re-evaluate what I do with it and what is available out there (hint: nothing impressive) so I don’t get caught with my shorts down come July 1st. I started outlining last week how an RSS reader allows me to plow through large volumes of news articles and blog posts, as I categorize them into topics relevant to me.
Today I explain how I actually get through all my reading material daily and share what’s important.
SKIMMING, SAVING AND READING
I also do not read everything, but I do read every headline. Over all the feeds I keep up with, there is much repetition of either the same articles appearing or promoted left and right, or look alike articles. I do not do my skimming and immediate reading online though. Rather I use an RSS reader app that syncs with my Google Reader account (but it cannot connect to any other service…) on my smartphone and tablet to do my news skimming.
When I find articles I think others should be aware of, I check them out and then use the “share” function with although it had disappeared from the web based Google reader, is still available from the app I use and still works. More on that in the next section.
When I see articles I want to read, or think I’ll need to refer to later, either to update some training material or to get a better grasp on something new, I “star” it in my app so I can find them later online through Google reader. I also use this feature throughout the year for any article I find either recapping the year in progress, forecasting the next, or looking further into the future. I do this because every year around the Christmas holidays I publish compendium articles on my blog listing all of these “starred” forecasting articles from the past year.
So far every other relatively comparable reader out there is only web based; there are not apps for them, or independent ones to sync up by various devices with. None have a mobile optimized interface which makes management, saving and sharing either very difficult due to very small on-screen buttons, or incompatible functions on apple devices. Some of the other readers allow to save articles to a section, but that cannot be used its own RSS feed to share with others; or they allow saving to another service like Evernote, Instapaper, Springpad or Page, neither of which allow for automated sharing.
SHARING
As I just mentioned, the sharing function still works on the app I use, as does the RSS page from goggle generated from these shares. I use another service called dlvr.it to push out my Google reader shares to my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts automatically at set intervals. This not only shares with the world, you all, what I think is important and that I believe you should be aware of, but also doesn’t dump it all within a half hour period when I’m actually doing my reading. I’ve been told several times by different people they appreciate these shares which is why I keep this up, and why I’m looking for a suitable alternative to Google Reader which will allow me to keep this up.
So far none of the alternatives I’ve tried allow both the saving AND sharing. They all offer one of the two, or in the rare occasion I’ve seen both one of the two doesn’t work on mobile… In any case, they only allow for a direct share to another social media, one at a time, not an RSS feed I can then manage the output myself.
Last week I started my 3-part series on how Google Reader’s imminent closure is forcing me out of my comfort zone, to re-evaluate what I do with it and what is available out there (hint: nothing impressive) so I don’t get caught with my shorts down come July 1st. I started outlining last week how an RSS reader allows me to plow through large volumes of news articles and blog posts, as I categorize them into topics relevant to me.
This week I explain how I actually get through all my reading material daily and share what’s important.
SKIMMING, SAVING AND READING
I also do not read everything, but I do read every headline. Over all the feeds I keep up with, there is much repetition of either the same articles appearing or promoted left and right, or look alike articles. I do not do my skimming and immediate reading online though. Rather I use an RSS reader app that syncs with my Google Reader account (but it cannot connect to any other service…) on my smartphone and tablet to do my news skimming.
When I find articles I think others should be aware of, I check them out and then use the “share” function with although it had disappeared from the web based Google reader, is still available from the app I use and still works. More on that in the next section.
When I see articles I want to read, or think I’ll need to refer to later, either to update some training material or to get a better grasp on something new, I “star” it in my app so I can find them later online through Google reader. I also use this feature throughout the year for any article I find either recapping the year in progress, forecasting the next, or looking further into the future. I do this because every year around the Christmas holidays I publish compendium articles on my blog listing all of these “starred” forecasting articles from the past year.
So far every other relatively comparable reader out there is only web based; there are not apps for them, or independent ones to sync up by various devices with. None have a mobile optimized interface which makes management, saving and sharing either very difficult due to very small on-screen buttons, or incompatible functions on apple devices. Some of the other readers allow to save articles to a section, but that cannot be used its own RSS feed to share with others; or they allow saving to another service like Evernote, Instapaper, Springpad or Page, neither of which allow for automated sharing.
SHARING
As I just mentioned, the sharing function still works on the app I use, as does the RSS page from goggle generated from these shares. I use another service called dlvr.it to push out my Google reader shares to my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts automatically at set intervals. This not only shares with the world, you all, what I think is important and that I believe you should be aware of, but also doesn’t dump it all within a half hour period when I’m actually doing my reading. I’ve been told several times by different people they appreciate these shares which is why I keep this up, and why I’m looking for a suitable alternative to Google Reader which will allow me to keep this up.
So far none of the alternatives I’ve tried allow both the saving AND sharing. They all offer one of the two, or in the rare occasion I’ve seen both one of the two doesn’t work on mobile… In any case, they only allow for a direct share to another social media, one at a time, not an RSS feed I can then manage the output myself.
Tomorrow I will conclude with how I use my reader to search for stats, reports and insightful content as well as which alternatives I’ve found.
