14th December 2007

Add blog post to Google Reader shared items without subscribing?

posted in blogs, web 2.0 |

I am using Google Reader more frequently both on my laptop and iPhone to read RSS feeds, but I still find some aspects of Google Reader awkward. For example, when I find a post I’d like to share (I have the code for my shared Google Reader items in the lower right sidebar of my blog) but I do NOT want to actually subscribe to that blog, how can I do that? This happens fairly frequently, when I follow blog links from one to another, and am not “inside” the Google Reader environment when I find a post I want to share. An example is Rashimi’s post “Tips on using SlideShare for live presentations.”

Does anyone know if it is possible, and if so, what is the fastest way, to add a post like this to Google Reader’s “shared items” without subscribing to the the blog? The only way I know to do this is subscribe to that person’s blog, find the post I want to share, and then click the SHARE button on the post within Google Reader.

There must be an easier way….


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This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 4:30 pm and is filed under blogs, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 11 responses to “Add blog post to Google Reader shared items without subscribing?”

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  1. 1 On December 14th, 2007, Doug Noon said:

    You can set up a Tumblelog, which has a bookmarklet feature that makes it very easy to link to any web page, and to selectively display any amount of text, or pictures, or any other media there may be on the page, and then subscribe to the RSS feed of your tumblelog. When it rolls through your reader, click the “share” button.

  2. 2 On December 14th, 2007, Stephen Rahn said:

    I’ve often wondered the same thing, but I don’t think there’s an easier way. The shared blog is obviously tied to only the feeds to which you subscribe. My only alternative is to add the ones I like to my del.icio.us account using the FireFox extension.

  3. 3 On December 14th, 2007, Ken Pendergrass said:

    Apart from keeping a delicious tag button in your firefox browser, I’m not sure you can “tag” individual posts or sites you discover without subscribing to them in google reader. But, I did find a cool feature in G-Reader where you can share out or “make public” specific folders. I found this to be a great feature when I want to share specific items to friends. So when I’m cruising through my G-reader feeds and find a post I want to share with Jane, I have a folder called “forJane” that is set to “public” via the settings menu. I hit “t” which is shortcut for “tag”- type “forJane” in the tag window and now that item is shared for Jane complete with her own share page and RSS feed. Very handy.

  4. 4 On December 15th, 2007, Sue Waters said:

    Definitely gives a lot of food for thought. I have to agree with the others that it may require at present using a different tool. Had not thought of Tumblr but alternative options I would use are co-mment or CoComment.

    My final thought is I wonder how peoples sharing habit will change now that Google Reader has integrated with Gtalk?

  5. 5 On December 16th, 2007, Alan Levine said:

    I understand the desire, since publishing shared links is so darned easy in GR– but it seems weird to “share stuff from feeds I don’t read”.

    So my thought is; if the stuff you are wanting so share is not in your GR feeds, then you are not accessing them primarily from GAR (though they may be a link form a post in GR)… My thought is this is something that makes sense to tag in del.icio.us (or fill in the blank whatever web site tagging tool you use) with a dedicated tag like “stuff2share”.

    It seems more useful to me to have these items in my tagged sites inventory..

    Now here is the cool part- you subscribe to the RSS feed for this tag in Google Reader, and share from there. If you use the Firefox del.icio.us extension, you can use the right/ctrl click to tag a link from something you are reading in GR.

    The other approach would be to subscribe- share- unsubscribe. I did a quick test, and my public Shared page featured a link from a feed I had dumped. But that seems more tedious.

  6. 6 On December 16th, 2007, joaquin said:

    HI, I read your concern. Have you tried cocomment? You can track comments without having to subscribe to all blogs.
    Give it a try and contact me with any questions at joaquin@cocomment.com

    Thanks

  7. 7 On December 18th, 2007, SusanT said:

    You can set up and subscribe to a public google notebook which you could then use to collect snippets etc for your google reader.

    Combined with Ken’s idea of sharing a public folder in reader should do the trick.

  8. 8 On December 18th, 2007, Wesley Fryer said:

    Susan: The problem with that solution for me is that when I’m using my iPhone to read RSS feeds and leave comments, I can’t use Google Notebook. That is a good idea for laptop feed reading/browsing tho.

    Thanks to everyone for other ideas and suggestions too. At this point I’m thinking it would be easiest to subscribe to the blog, and if I don’t want to leave it as a subscribed blog put it in a category like “other,” then those can be periodically deleted. I do need to try the “tag in Google Reader” feature which Ken described. Using a special tag in del.icio.us and then sharing those updates with a RSS to html javascript is also a good suggestion.

  9. 9 On December 18th, 2007, Sue Waters said:

    If you want to see how tags can be used scroll down my post on getting more out of Google Reader and I have a diagram that explains how to do this and gives examples of how others are using it.

  10. 10 On December 19th, 2007, Heather Ross said:

    Why not add this postings to something like del.icio.us and then subscribe to your del.icio.us feed in Google Reader?

  11. 11 On January 30th, 2008, Louis Gray said:

    Here’s the answer (a little late, but I hope it helps)

    Add Items to Your Google Reader Link Blog Without Subscribing
    http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/01/add-items-to-your-google-reader-link.html

    Share Almost Any Blog Post in Google Reader
    http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/01/share-almost-any-blog-post-in-google.html