Tag Archive for 'Google Reader'

Using Google Reader to create a searchable archive of Twitter mentions

Published on March 16, 2012 at 4:36 pm in Google Reader, How-to, JISC CETIS and Twitter. 4 Comments By Martin Hawksey Tags: Google Reader.

My solution for extracting site activity data from Delicious isn’t going so well (their API is letting me down). Instead I thought I’d share how I use Google Reader to create a searchable archive of Twitter mentions. It’s not particularly a new trick and you’ll find a number of similar how-to’s so this post is more about awareness raising.

Here’s the recipe:

Fire up Google Reader and click on the ‘Subscribe’ button
In the box enter http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=yourusername+-from%3Ayourusername&show_user=true replacing the text yourusername with your twitter screen name The search is basically looking for all mentions of yourusername –from:yourusername. If you want to include things you tweet just remove +-from%3Ayourusername from the url
Click Add and it’ll start pulling in @replies and @mentions

To search for those useful links people sent you but you’ve forgot enter a term in the search box and select the feed you just created.

I’m not sure how many tweets Google Reader will cache (I’ve seen it mentioned that all are saved) so you don’t have to worry about the usually 7 day Twitter search limit. This solution is also not limited to mentions you can use any search operator you like.

I’ve fallen out with Google Reader, we’re on a trail separation (I’m having a fling with Tiny Tiny RSS)

Published on November 1, 2011 at 9:01 am in Google Reader, I am not sure and Uncategorized. 4 Comments By Martin Hawksey Tags: Google Reader.

Back in July I started drafting a post about how I use Google Reader as part of my workflow as a RSC e-Learning Advisor. Those days are behind me but I still like to keep up to date with what’s going and highlight stories that I find interesting and others in my network might like too.

The key part which I never got around to writing was the Share and Share with Note buttons. I’d setup these button to do a couple or extra things: using http://reader2twitter.appspot.com/ anything I shared were automatically (and almost instantly using pubhubsubbub) posted on my twitter account (I also experimented with http://ifttt.com/); and links were collated and published monthly as what I starred this month using Craig Fifield’s Shared Item Posts plugin.

The thing I really liked about this setup was the tweeting of links via share worked just as well on the mobile version of Reader which meant I didn’t have to faff with opening twitter clients to share stuff. Here’s a graphic I started which showed the flow:

Unfortunately in Google’s recent refresh of Reader as well as completely borking the user interface (way too much whitespace) share buttons are replaced by ‘share on Google+’ . I’m sure there are ways for me to reconnect the workflow via Google+, but instead I’m going to use it as a opportunity to try something different.

Back in August Doug Belshaw pointed me to Tiny Tiny RSS “an open source web-based news feed (RSS/Atom) aggregator, designed to allow you to read news from any location, while feeling as close to a real desktop application as possible”.

The main thing I’m interested in is being able to publish selected stories to a personal RSS feed which leave me lots of mash-up opportunities. And also if TT-RSS isn’t doing something I like I can hack the code. Win, win, win! (I realise installing something on a webserver won’t be for everyone)

PS there is a great post on persistent.info Google Reader Social Retrospective

PPS here’s what I started writing about Google Reader in July

The RSCs are all about “stimulating and supporting innovation in learning” and a big part of this is finding and highlight best practice, emerging ideas and occasionally pointing our supported institutions to some cool stuff. In England some of the RSC activity is directed to producing case studies for the Excellence Gateway.

On a more micro level (aka me) I usually spend my lunchtime with a bowel of muesli and Google Reader (for those unfamiliar with Reader it’s an RSS aggregator, and for those unfamiliar with RSS …), sifting through almost 250 feeds trying to find interesting developments in the world of education and technology. And of the 45,905 items I’ve read in the last 6 years how do I share the best bits with you?

With over 300 items usually hitting my reader each day the first part is using some tools to surface some of the best bits. I do this in a couple of ways. First Reader has an option to take a long list of items and ‘sort by magic’. The ‘magic’ is a personalised ranking based on the items I’ve previously shared with other people. A recent additional tool I’m experimenting with is the Chrome PostRank extension which “uses social statistics from readers online — like you — to determine what’s worth reading”

So I’ve finally found something interesting how do I get the word out. Reader comes with some useful share options shown below:

For things I want to push to my networks I’ll use Share, Share with note or Sent to > My Twitter.

How to Scoop.it from Google Reader (2 ways)

Published on June 15, 2011 at 12:02 pm in Google Reader, How-to and Twitter. 10 Comments By Martin Hawksey Tags: Google Reader.

I’ve avoided the whole Twitter newspaper type services like paper.li/Tweeted Times and when I see one published in my timeline the only time I click through to see what’s in it is when I’m mentioned as a source. So yesterday when I saw Brian Kelly was suggesting to his colleagues to look at the one such aggregation for IWMW made the the new kid on the blog Scoop.it I initially ignored it.

A little later AJCann tweeted:

@AJCann A gentle introduction to Twitter for the apprehensive academic |http://bit.ly/lPEMTd

and being a topic I was interested in I clicked through only to find myself back at Scoop.it:

Suddenly it was apparent that Scoop.it has a number of key features which potential make it a useful tool for information curators like myself. Scoop.it allows you to post individual news/resources into your Twitter stream as normal, but in directing you via their site you can also see other items already collected by the user ie I’ve recommended this, but have you also seen that. I encourage you to see how the UI works by seeing this link shared by Alan (make sure you come back here after tho ;)

Anyway it was enough to convince me that it’s a useful tool to experiment with so requested a beta account with scoop.it and started my Scoop.it: Google Apps Script.

How to Scoop.it from Google Reader

Enough of the backstory, how can you add items to your Scoop.it from Google Reader.

Method 1: Add the RSS from your Shared Items

For each of your Scoop.it topics you can Manage Sources. If you click on Advance Options you can add a custom RSS feed which in this case could be your Google Reader Shared Items public page. This is okay but you still need to curate this stream to work out what gets published.

Method 2: From Google Reader Send to Scoop.it

Within Google Reader there is an option in each item for Send To which can be used to post the item in another service.

The places you can send to is customised in your Google Reader settings and includes services like Facebook, Delicious, Twitter but not Scoop.it. To add Scoop.it you need to add a custom link and here’s how.

In Google Reader access your Reader settings by click on the cogin the top right
Select the Send To tab and scroll to the bottom of the page and click Create a custom link and enter these details:
Name: Scoop.it
URL: http://www.scoop.it/bookmarklet?fs=1&url=${url}
Icon URL: http://www.scoop.it/resources/img/favicon.ico
Click Save

Now when you see an item you want to share you should be able to send it straight to Scoop.it

BTW in the predefined list if you also want Twitter its broken as its a different request url. You can make your own with variations on the URL http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Liked:+${title}+${short-url}+(From%20${source}).

PS Since writing this I’ve also discovered this is covered in the Scoop.it feedback site (still thought worth sharing)

Google Reader: Follow Changes to any Website

Published on February 2, 2010 at 4:00 pm in Google and Google Reader. Closed By Martin Hawksey Tags: Google Reader, RSC NewsFeed.

Screenshot of 'Create a feed' dialog box

Reader is Google’s web-based service which allows to view the latest updates to your favourite news or blog sites in one place. Traditionally services and desktop applications like Google Reader have relied on RSS feeds (RSS in plain English – Commoncraft) to detect new information. This technology works very well but not all websites publish RSS feeds. Google have now announced a new feature for Reader which allows users to to follow changes to any website. Click here for more information from the Google Reader Official blog.

Festive fun: Auto tweeting your Google Reader shared items using Yahoo Pipes and twitterfeed

Published on December 17, 2009 at 4:38 pm in Google Reader, How-to, Twitter and Yahoo Pipes. 6 Comments By Martin Hawksey Tags: Google Reader.

Using the festive period to stray slightly away from my core remit I thought I would document a little mashup which allows you to automatically tweet items you share in Google Reader.

Background

I’m a big fan of Google Reader and its the main way I consume RSS feeds (unsure about RSS? Here it is explained in plain English). Already I use the Shared Items Post Plugin to automatically post a digest of my shared Reader items. The idea is I’m acting as an intelligent filter, sifting through almost 150 subscriptions to pull out items which might be of most relevance to staff at our supported institutions. The nice thing about Google Reader is I can share items making a personal note or comment. This has parallels to micro-blogging sites like twitter.

The emergence of twitter, and similar status update sites, is changing the way many people tap into information streams and for me it makes sense to make sure information I produce or find useful is disseminated through as many channels as possible.

How to do it

Go to your Google Reader Shared page (if you haven’t set-up a public page or can’t remember where it is login to Reader, click on ‘Your stuff’, then ‘share settings’, shown below).

On the page that opens there should be a link to ‘Preview your shared items page in a new window’, on this page you need to copy your ‘Atom feed’ link.

At this point you can go to straight to an automatic tweeting service called twitterfeed and paste this link in as a new feed (Twitterfeed is a free service which allows you to submit a RSS feed. New feed items are then ‘tweeted’ on your behalf). Unfortunately doing it this way means that any notes you’ve written about a post are lost.

Not satisfied with this I decided to create a Yahoo Pipe which extracts my notes, if any, and tweets this instead. If you’ve never tried Yahoo Pipes its a great free service to take existing RSS feeds, do some tweaking and output a new custom RSS feed. I’ll explain how the pipe works at the end of this post. For now:

open this ‘Tweet Google Reader Shared’ yahoo pipe
paste your ‘Atom feed’ link from Google Reader and click ‘Run Pipe’.
copy the ‘Get as RSS’ link into twitterfeed.com.

Now when you share an item in Google Reader with a note, the note will be tweeted via twitterfeed.com (if you share an item without a note the existing item title will be used).

To see an example here is a tweet posted via twitterfeed which was pulled from the Google Reader Shared page shown below: