by Andy Brudtkuhl on August 30, 2009
Last month I wrote about how Google Reader changed how I consume information again. Prior to that announcement I had been using Feedly solely – as a “front end” to Google Reader. Feedly has once again been added into my daily rotation – because they have integrated the friends and comments features of Google Reader. This has made for a FriendFeed-like experience.
If you are not familiar with Feedly – it is a Firefox extension that acts as an interface with Google Reader.
Feedly weaves the content of your favorite sites and services into a magazine-like start page.
I like Feedly because it gives a sense of organization to an otherwise unwieldy stream of information that is Google Reader. If you are wondering why the addition of Friends and Comments is important, read this Google Reader post. Basically the friends feature creates a human powered filter for me to consume information.
Google Reader has made tremendous progress on the social aspects over the last months: profile, user search, asymmetric follow, comments, friends and comments view. We wanted to make sure that people who use feedly as a Google Reader client were able to take advantage of all these new features. As part of feedly 2.x.009, we are pushing out a new friends/comments page.
via Support for Google Reader Friends and Comments
by Andy Brudtkuhl on August 27, 2009
Today Google Reader added “Featured Reading Lists”.
These lists have been created by high profile bloggers. The idea is to offer up a list of what these A-Listers read.
Where do Arianna Huffington and Thomas Friedman go to get different perspectives on the news? Which economics sites does Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman read? What sites and blogs do the editors of Lifehacker, Boing Boing and Kottke read?
These questions have always interested us, so we decided to approach leaders across a variety of fields and ask them what they read online. We got lots of great responses, which we’ve collected into our second edition of Power Readers. In this edition, we’ve expanded from Power Readers in Politics to include journalists, techies, fashion critics, foodies, and more. We hope this will be a good place for you to find more great things to read, whether you’re new to Google Reader or already have an extensive reading list.
Will this do for these blogs what the Twitter Suggested User List Did?
by Andy Brudtkuhl on August 10, 2009
You’ve heard the news.
So here’s five things Google Reader needs to replace FriendFeed…
1. Feed Imports
2. Better Bookmarklet
3. Easier User Discovery
4. Better Commenting
5. Unified UI geared towards community over content
by Andy Brudtkuhl on August 6, 2009
by Andy Brudtkuhl on July 23, 2009
Yesterday I cleansed my Google Reader removing 75% of the feeds I subscribe to. Google Reader’s latest update adding people search, following, and likes completely changed how I consume information – with less noise and more signal.
For years I’ve been talking about creating networks of human filters. I’ve even tried building apps that allow these networks to form and once FriendFeed came along I realized that other people saw the value in creating these same types of filters. Techmeme also quickly realized what I’ve been thinking for years – a computer simply cannot remove all the noise and thus a human is necessary.
Back to Google Reader. So there are 10-15 blogs I read regularly. I was probably only interested in 10-20% of the “other” posts that came into Google Reader and due to the massive amount of noise I probably only got to read 10% of that 10% :-)
So yesterday I dove into Google Reader and started “following” people I trust to consume information, figure out what’s relevant, and share it. Now instead of subscribing to hundreds of RSS feeds I let Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, Michael Fruchter and others tell me what’s important.
See below
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