Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. It was released by Google on October 7, 2005 through Google Labs. Reader graduated from beta status on September 17, 2007
Since it’s graduation it’s been giving out the mind blowing features to make your topics more social.
Users can subscribe to feeds using either Google Reader’s search function, or by entering in the exact URL of the RSS or Atom feed. New posts from those feeds are then shown on the left-hand side of the screen. One can then order that list by date or relevance. Items can also be organized with labels, as well as being able to create “Starred Items” for easy access.
If you have not done so you need to go to your Google Reader settings then to the ‘Send To’ tab and choose the sites/services you want to enable. There are already 10+ services and sites you can choose from, however the real action lies a little below.
You can create your own custom menu entries to do all kinds of interesting stuff with the feed articles.
Google Reader offers you certain placeholders i.e. ${source}, ${title}, ${url} and ${short-url} which represent the Site, Title, URL and shortened URL of the feed entry you are currently reading. So if you would like to search for the title of the current entry on Google you could easily use the syntax:
http://www.google.com/search?q=${title}
So as along as the site/service you are planning to add allows you to play with the URL you can easily create the menu entry for it.
Here are some examples you can add. (Some sites may not like hot linking to images/icons):
Blog to WordPress
- Name : Blog To WordPress
- URL : http://www.
.com/wp-admin/press-this.php?u=${url}&t=${title}&s=${source}&v=2 - Icon URL : http://s.wordpress.org/favicon.ico?3
Save as PDF
- Name : Save as PDF
- URL : http://savepageaspdf.pdfonline.com/pdfonline/pdfonline.asp?cURL=${url}
- Icon URL : http://www.adobe.com/lib/com.adobe/template/icon/pdf.gif
Send to Ping.fm
- Name : Send to Ping.fm
- URL : http://ping.fm/ref/?link=${url}&title=${title}
- Icon URL : http://ping.fm/_images/icons/ping.png
Share This button
- Name : Share this
- URL : http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&url=${url}&title=${title}
- Icon URL : http://shareicons.com/favicon.ico
Send to Evernote
- Name : Send to Evernote
- URL : http://www.evernote.com/grclip?url=${url}&title=${title}
- Icon URL : http://s.wordpress.org/favicon.ico?3
Identi.ca
- Name : Identi.ca
- URL : http://identi.ca/?action=newnotice&status_textarea=%E2%80%9C${title}%E2%80%9d%3a%20${short-url}
- Icon URL : http://identi.ca/favicon.ico
View full text of partial feeds
- Name : Full Text Feed
- URL : http://fivefilters.org/content-only/makefulltextfeed.php?url=${url}
- Icon URL : http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1121/1430385323_4d4351d815.jpg
Translate an Article
- Name : Google Translate
- URL : http://translate.google.com/translate?u=${url}
- Icon URL : http://translate.google.com/favicon.ico
Speed Read with Zap Reader
- Name : Zap Reader
- URL : http://www.zapreader.com/reader?URL=${url}
- Icon URL : http://zapreader.com/favicon.ico
Notice: Make sure you disable the popup blocker for Google Reader as most of these will open as a popup.
