Solution: Google Reader. It's a feedreader, like Feedburner, but it's brilliantly integrated with other Google services. Want to e-mail a story; just click the "E-mail" button and start typing, your Gmail contacts will autofill as suggestions. Read a lot of blogs? Put them into folders based on priority or subject. Want to keep a list of specific kinds of posts you like, like recipes you like? Just create and tag the feeds. Feed just look really cool, or is worth remembering? Star it, just like in Gmail.
But the best part is sharing. I can take any post from any blog I read and "share" it with my friends. Here's a site that Google generated for me to let you'll (non-reader users) see my stuff. It's also available as its own RSS feed.
But if you'll were using reader, it would work even better. You'd be able to share things with me (and other person you chose to share them with) from the blogs you read, just the same as I do with you. I'm hoping soon they'll add the ability to annotate others posts, which would make it damn near perfect in my opinion.
This is another example of a web 2.0 service that is highly dependent on the network effect. I know it's not all that compelling with 4 people actually looking at your stuff, but if this was integrated into facebook... (hint, hint, Google should have bought them when the stock was at $700...) We need one online service to rule them all. Sure, putting all your data with one company is scary, but it's the only way online sharing and identity management are ever going to reach their full potential. Considering that, who do you trust? Microsoft, nope. Apple, nah, the walled garden is nice but I'd rather not be locked in. Google is the only person with any hope of making central online identities work. I profoundly hope they do, I'm sick of having so many different networks to manage (or neglect, as the case may be).
---And now, for something completely different---
Pure Brilliance; all blogs should be required to use the phrase "party liquors" at least once a week.
And while I'm plugging blogs, let me give a shout-out to two of my favorite, Of Dogs and Horses
and A few of My Favorite Things. I know they're in my blogroll, but their authors deserve special mention.
A top hat, for $56. Well worth it, in my opinion. Damn not having a job, I can't buy things like Rolls Royces and top hats. Of course I do have time to blog about them, so it's not all bad. And honestly, when all you're doing is blogging, the maintenance is pretty cheap.
LIVE UPDATE: Emily just triggered the "democratic" rule in conversation. She was insisting that we could enter the 24 Hours of Lemons, simply by buying a junker, buying a Chilton's guide, and taking off for the track. Yeah, whenever someone says "that's all we need, trust me" it's a red flag.
3 comments:
Well, we all know that whatever junker you enter into the 24 hours of lemons would have to be a slushbox, cause someone doesn't know how to shifts his own gears. Or you could let her drive, oh I like that a lot.
zack
HA!
I have learned asshole. Thanks to Emily, and her parents small, early 90s Mitsubishi pickup I've joined the legions of the blessed.
Not to say I'm an ace wheelman, the last time I drove stick I did manage to dump 3 (poorly attached) hay bales off the back while attempting to pull into traffic.
Nevertheless, our taunt is misplaced.
Woo! Spreading the google reader love... Also, I was reading one of your shared items and forgot that it was you who shared it. I thought to myself, self, Nicholas would like that. Uh, duh. Oh well.
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