Explanatory Note
I just checked and I have 385 feeds associated with Google Reader. I am not actually sure if that is a lot because I know people who have more. Keeping tabs on 385 information sources could easily become a big time consumer and I try to keep that in mind (Google Reader adds quite a bit of efficiency to the task). Thankfully I can say that I am continually blessed by much of the content I find and it is at present still worth the investment of time.
Throughout the week I share links with a good friend by emailing them directly from Google Reader. We also listen to various podcasts and occasionally share a link to an audio file. It is not uncommon for a good discussion to ensue via email. I have very much enjoyed this aspect of my hobby. What follows is simple explanation of the tools we use. I have added a few simple rules which will make the process of sharing and discussing links among a small group of friends even easier.
Who are the Linklings?
- Well I am hoping you are! The term “Linklings” is a play on the infamous literary discussion group The Inklings. However instead of discussing various works of literature you will be discussing links on the web. Instead of meeting in a tavern you will converse and share media using email, iTunes (or similar software), and Google Reader.
- The term Linkling is really meant to describe a way of implementing a small, semi-private social network using tools you may already be using. The primary purpose of this document is to teach you how to become a Linkling.
Google Reader
- If you want to become a Linkling you need to create a Google account (if you don’t already have one) and then sign in to Google Reader. Click the link here to complete this step.
- What is Google Reader you ask? Well Nick Baum, product manager for Google Reader sums it up nicely when he says “Think of Google Reader as an in-box for the web.” It is a convenient way to keep track of websites. I suggest you watch this video to see a demo.
- Next you begin using Google Reader to keep track of your favorite web sites and perhaps some of your least favorite ones. What you need to realize is that almost everyone publishes something called an RSS feed (sort of like a news wire service) that you can read from Google Reader. You can also organize these feeds into folders. This makes it very easy to monitor the content from hundreds of sources. One of my favorite tricks is to grab the feed for a Google news/blog search term and monitor the search from Google Reader. The possibilities are unending.
iTunes
- iTunes is optional. The idea here is that Linklings share publicly accessible audio (occasionally video) content. I say it is optional because you can actually use Google Reader in place of iTunes but you lose the ability to automatically download content to you computer or sync it up to your mp3 player.
- The beauty of the system I will describe is that it allows any member in the group to publish a link to a podcast and all other members automatically receive it. I will demonstrate that in a bit.
Email (Gmail Preferred)
- Everyone needs to maintain an email group which is comprised of the other members in the group. This really should not be a big deal because the whole point of a group like this is to keep it small. If the group gets large enough you may need to set up an email group with Yahoo Groups, Google Groups or something else like that.
- When you send a link or send an email make sure you send it to the whole group.
- I really like Gmail because it organizes all of the emails with the same subject into a group of emails which makes following the whole discussion much easier. It also makes your in-box easier to manage.
- A Gmail account also allows us to share traditional documents such as presentations and collaborate on them if the need arises.
Putting It All Together
Note: Click the thumbnails below to see the images.
In the first image I am emailing a link to a post I have found in Google Reader. For the sake of this demo I am emailing it to myself but you would typically email this to your entire group of friends.
The second image is what I what I see once I open the email. When you reply to an email make sure you always reply to the group with either reply all or by adding the group name when you hit reply. Nothing to fancy yet, just a group of friends sharing and discussing links they find interesting.
In the third image I am back in Google Reader, but this time I have chosen to “share” a post. All of the posts I have shared are published to a public web address as well as an RSS feed. *** Important *** Only “share” items in Google Reader which are podcasts or links to multimedia files that can be downloaded by iTunes.
The fourth image is the raw XML contained in the RSS feed. In the next image I will add the URL for the RSS feed to iTunes.
Once the RSS feed has been configured, iTunes will begin downloading all of the items shared in Google Reader. You need to get the URL for each member in the group and add it to iTunes. There are ways to consolidate multiple RSS feeds if this becomes to hard to manage.
As you can see in the image above, iTunes has automatically downloaded the audio file that I shared. Please note, if you don’t want to use iTunes for this you could just as easily add the RSS feed as just another Google Reader feed.
