staying.cool

i’ve jumped.

from half to full.

i’m not talking about cups. or bandwagons. or jacks. or pogo-sticks. or any other random association you might make.

the fact that you’re reading this sentence in your reader, should give you a clue.

i’ve read more than a few posts, such as this, and this, this, this, this, this, this [i assume you get the idea now]; all of which play devils advocate on the topic of partial RSS vs full RSS feeds. you have those who prefer to have a summary so they can decide, those who believe some kind of freedom is being affected, talk about the possibility of spamming, and those who talk of advertising advantages. now, i personally don’t mind clicking through on a partial feed (especially given a fx extension that lets me do it in reader direct), and more than a few spammy pings convinced me a few years ago to switch into partial feeds as well. recently, i have even started putting in custom summaries [see how much i love you guys?].

i do mind having my content stolen by spammers [eg: right here].. even if only a few people read it in the first place but, i’m going to suck it up, and no, this is not because i read a lot of posts about how people don’t read partial feeds as much. at all.

i have currently enabled full feeds for everything in this blog, if you do a ‘refresh’ in reader for my feed, you should see it take effect. this is not a momentous occasion, though i’m trying my best to make it feel like one

man, do i make a big hoo-ha about the most random of things..

update: “random of things”?! and not one of you said a thing? damn, damn, damn, damn..

remembering the new interface of google reader, random clicking brings me to a greasemonkey script to integrate it with gmail.

A lot of people have remarked on the similarities between the new Reader interface and Gmail’s. With this in mind, I’ve created a simple Greasemonkey script that adds a “Feeds” in Gmail. When clicked, Reader’s list view is loaded on the right.

ah. one step closer.

google reader gets a very interesting update.

while the interface is definitely more functional, and sleek; while retaining that concept of reading all the feeds at once - which is what i liked in the first place.. i’m missing the ‘intelligent tagging’ where it guessed the tag based on what one had saved. other than that very minor glitch.. sweet. very very sweet. i didn’t know of the existence of public reader ‘pages’.. gives me some ideas

i don’t see a beta on the logo anymore either. interesting, but i thought that would happen when its integrated with mail, a la thunderbird.

the small touches are all there, though.. the subtle outlining of the current post thats being read, the AJAX, the ‘views’ concept from gmail being ported over, unlimited post reading (you just keep on scrolling, and scrolling, and…); even the ‘list view’.. which makes the mail integration easier.. possibly.

update: correction to what i earlier said..

Tips and tricks

Here are some useful keyboard shortcuts:

• j/k: next/previous item
• n/p: scan down/up (list only)
• o/enter: expand/collapse (list only)
• s: star item
• + s: share item
• v: view original
• t: tag item
• m: mark item as read
• r: refresh
• + a: mark all as read
• 1: switch to expanded view
• 2: switch to list view
• + n/p: next/previous subscription
• + x: expand folder
• + o: open subscription or folder
• g then h: go home
• g then a: go to all items
• g then s: go to starred items
• g then t: open tag selector
• g then u: open subscription selector

the last two lead to a sub-window like so:

i’m in awe. even better than i first thought. now, for making the interface a little more customizable - like adding or removing interface details - and we’re done

today, i also discovered the existence of the ‘MyLifeBits‘ project.. which is a MS venture.

MyLifeBits is a lifetime store of everything. It is the fulfillment of Vannevar Bush’s 1945 Memex vision including full-text search, text & audio annotations, and hyperlinks. There are two parts to MyLifeBits: an experiment in lifetime storage, and a software resecarch effort.

other than the fact that i love the concept, i wonder how much easier google is making it now. currently, my mail, my news, my social network, my photos, calendar, notes and chat are all part of google. information resource indeed.

to imagine myself only digitally, or rather, electronically reminds of the asimov story ‘eyes do more than see‘. nevetheless, the concept of being purely electronic, completely online in the DRM world of today is not a great idea either

but would i ? hell yeah.

oh, and apparently, orkut is used by dumbasses with no real life too. i foresee a lot of people blanking out their profiles. to think that orkut is invite-based to avoid this kinda thing.. tch tch.

oh well. my logic still applies. i think.

google reader is developing very well indeed. been using it for a while.. don’t ask me why, i like the interface for some reason. they’ve added functionality to show items that you might want to share… i’ve implemented it in the sidebar. 2 main categories : posts i like; and my pet subject - google’s takeover

enjoy.. i think.

i’ve talked about rss readers earlier.. google has entered the fray; and very neatly nearly won me over.
thanks to lucas, i’d become an onfolio convert; when they were giving it away for free.. thought it must be noted that its a little too system intensive. its rss capture is wayyy superior to anything else as well.
a little more tweaking is needed by google; but its a far sleeker alternative to bloglines.

another first: me actually reviewing something !

as i mentioned, i was checking out sage and habari xenu as options to bloglines. bloglines is neat, but it checks the RSS feeds at certain preset intervals.. sometimes doesn’t check for days - in which case one gets 4 posts in a row. i’m not complaining about a free service, however it is irritating to find out that you’re reading old stuff simply coz the server didn’t check correctly.

at any rate, a half hour check on extensions for firefox threw up sage and habari xenu as recommended ones.. there were others, but not as refined.

installation and the rest is straightforward, one can import subscriptions via an OPML file.. the inbuilt manager for both is the default bookmark manager for firefox- but thats just background.

habari xenu is clearly a mozilla extension from the base look of the extension, as opposed to being a firefox extension.

both the extensions have a simple 2-pane interface, with blogs on the left, and the entries on the right. optional panes are for search, list of entries, etc. when asked to update, the aggregators check all the concerned RSS/RDF files and highlight the updated ones.

one main difference is in the method of entry display. habari xenu shows you the simple headline, with a link to the entry. sage on the other hand gives you as many details as will be provided by the feed file - meaning you can read the entry via the feed itself.

both the aggregators don’t have an auto-update function for feeds - this is one main difference from bloglines. they won’t check at preset intervals.. they check when you ask them to check. as they directly read the RSS/RDF file, this means they don’t have time delays when it comes to updates.

habari xenu didn’t work as well as it should - it crashed a couple of times.. and updating was a little cranky too. sage is working great so far - however one has to manually mark feeds read/unread to prevent confusion.

verdict: sage.
wise man know which reader better now