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Google Reader is a product for reading RSS feeds. What is an RSS feed? Only a brilliant tool for reducing today’s information overload into bite sized morsels! RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (learn more here). It’s simple, because it takes complicated site updates and gives you a pretty text version.

An example
Let’s use the New York Times as an example: Updates are made constantly to the site, on dozens on pages. If you were to visit the site online, you’d have a hard time finding every update, as you’d see the new articles mixed in with the old and you’d have to know where to look. An RSS feed of NYTimes.com is much easier! The feed consists of a list of links to articles (with the first few lines) that were recently updated or posted. As new articles are published, the list would grow, providing you a way to read through all the newest content quickly, skimming the article headlines for those that interest you. With an RSS feed, you could browse every new article in the site in a matter of minutes.

Taking it to the next step
As an RSS feed is essentially the article link, the first few lines of text, the date and the time, there is no reason to only browse one site at a time. You can browse several feeds at once! (Just an Asterisk Spoiler alert) This is how I manage to “read” hundreds of blogs every day in only about 30 minutes… I subscribe (it’s syndication after all) to all of the feeds that interest me and they are constantly updated with content. I can mark them read as I work my way through, so I can easily differentiate between new and old content.

Enter Google Reader
Google Reader is an online RSS reader. There are tons of different ways to read feeds. However, online browsing has its perks – my feeds are available whenever and where ever I have a moment to spare. I log in with my Google credentials like any other Google site and I can restart my reading from where I left off. I have a consolidated view of all my reading and I don’t have to worry about navigating to 20 sites…  I also like the short cuts.  Move to next article is j, back an article is k, and v opens a new window with the site your perusing…  

Get yourself setup!

Sign in with your Google credentials at reader.google.com.  From here you can add content to your reader.  Click on “Add a Subscription” and put in your search term in the box that appears.  For example, a quick search for “Just an Asterisk” will give you a link to our feed.

From there all you have to do is click on “Subscribe” below the feed name.

You can group your feeds into folders, like our “cool blogs” folder on the left.  You can also star articles for later (shortcut key “s”) as your reading.

Once you’ve created a folder for something, you can look at all of that content in one view.  For example, by clicking on my “cool blogs” folder, I can review all of those feeds in one list (in the main pane).

That’s all for now on the reader, but be sure to post anything you think I missed in the comments!

~ab

There has been a flurry of articles recently by new kindle owners, desperate to reinforce the permanence of paper and to cynically point out that the new Kindle still isn’t perfect. The Just an Asterisk perspective? Well the first thing I downloaded to read was Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “Outliers”, in which he describes an outlaw that was “just dumb enough to be fearless, just bright enough to be dangerous and a dead shot”. I think we can describe the Kindle with the same terms.

Dumb enough to be fearless
There are a few different ebook readers out there and the Kindle was by no means the first. That said, why did all of the previous devices fail? Were we (as in everyone) simply too happy with paper? I think the answer is (and I’m not the first to suggest this) that the ebook industry was confused. What were we getting from these readers? (More chargers? Eye strain?) What was enhanced by reading a digital version of a book? Rival products by Sony and others had tried hard, introduced too many frills (like being able to play MP3s and silly desktop software) without actually improving the reading experience. In this environment, for an ebook reader to succeed, it just had to be a little bit better than the previous attempts. Amazon needed to dive in, looking perhaps a bit dumb (Amazon does not sell any other hardware) and more than a little bit fearless. Perhaps this was a gamble, perhaps the company was going in a strange direction, but Amazon seemed “just dumb enough to be fearless” – and that was essential to the success of the device.

Bright enough to be dangerous
Once Amazon was in the game, you could easily argue that they were a touch brighter than their colleagues. Amazon had become the definitive noun for an online bookstore. It only made sense that their product be a portal to their proven online shopping experience. Moreover, offering free access (via “Whispernet” from Sprint’s network) resulted in a “wow” factor (I can surf the web for free??) and a heavy hit to my credit card the first week (you can buy a book and start reading within a minute – my wife is going to kill me). Was this earth-shattering technology? No. Was it “just bright enough to be dangerous”? Yes.

A crack shot
Amazon had enhanced the reading experience, but what about the standard ebook reader features? They are actually great! One can easily convert PDFs, consult words with the built in dictionary, add annotations and bookmarks and highlight passages for later use. Oh yes, I almost forgot – you even have great internal memory so that you can carry a ton of books around. These are similar features that we’ve seen in most ebook devices. The Kindle does them well, but without flair. It’s for reading books, after all, and as required it’s “a crack shot”.

So why the post? It’s hardly full of advice, tips and insight (as I presumptuously assume my other posts provide). The real reason is because the Kindle crowns the content as king. This is not a flashy device, it’s a functional one and that’s what we’re all about :).  This is not a toy but a useful device for everyone.  I hope you’ll investigate a bit further and here are some links to get you started:

• Buy one
• Read about one at CNET
• Gizmodo’s Kindle Review Matrix

~ab