gHacks technology news » sharing

How to Make Google Reader a Bookmarking and Sharing Powerhouse

David Pierce — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:45:41 +0000

Google Reader is the website I open more than any other. Except maybe Gmail, but that’s always open. Totally doesn’t count. Point is, I use Google Reader a lot. I use it to follow blogs and websites, to keep track of all my favorite people, and much, much more.

Reader’s the center of all my information consumption, but previously wasn’t so good at letting you share that information. If you wanted to bookmark something, or share a cool article with a friend, your options were limited. You’d either star an item, and then come back to it later, or you’d share it – but then only other Google Reader users could see it, and then that was only if you were friends on Google Reader. Which I have, like, three of.

But Google, always in sync with my needs (we have a wonderful and functional relationship, Google and I), has just released a “Send To” feature for Reader. Send To lets you share an article via Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, (though those are sort of the same now, huh?) Digg, Posterous, and many more.

To set this up, open Reader. At the top right of the page, click “Settings.” You’ll then see a tab in Settings called “Send To.” Click it. Then, select the service or services you want to add to your Send To… menu in Reader.

The list is long, but you’re not limited to it. With a bit of know-how, you can create a custom link that’ll let you send the Reader item to any service or website you can dream up – the link to do that is at the bottom of the “Send To” Settings page.

People are already starting to cook these up. There’s a way to send from Google Reader to Evernote; a way to send to Instapaper; a way to send to ShareThis (which has every social network you can imagine), and many, many more. A little Googling, and I’m betting you can add anything you can think of.

Once you’re all set up, sending items can be done in two ways. You can either go to the end of an item, and click the “Send To” button, which brings up a dropdown menu of all your options; or, hit Shift-T to open the same menu for the current item. I use the keyboard shortcut all the time (I heart keyboard shortcuts), and it’s definitely the fastest solution.

Whether you use Delicious, Twitter, Tumblr, Plurk, or just about anything else, you can now send directly to it from Google Reader – skipping at least one step, and a whole bunch of hassle.

What’s your bookmarking and sharing method of choice?

Tags: bookmarking, feeds, Google, google reader, rss, sharing, social

Sharing is easy with Gmail!

Daniel Pataki — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:14:56 +0000

Since the introduction of the Gmail Labs settings to all users sharing in emails has been much easier, and I think somewhat overlooked. There are a few things you can do to tweak your inbox to make your life a bit easier, to enable you to share videos, images and more with your friends and co-workers. Just head on down to your Gmail account, click on settings, go to the labs tab and you’ll find a load of options, here are just a few you can use which are great.

Youtube Preview

This really cool feature puts Youtube videos right inside your email. If you receive any link pointing to a Youtube video the actual video’s thumbnail will be shown in the email (words for multiple links), and clicking the thumbnail will enlarge the player so you can view the video right there. I am always looking for ways to streamline my work (and my fun), and this is a real time saver.

Image Previews

The same system above is implemented for Picasa, and Flickr images, again, making image sharing much less painful. If you receive a wad of links you don’t need to click through each one (especially since many filenames are like dsc11902.jpg), this way you get a small preview right away.

Show everyone where you are

If you have a signature enabled, you can add your map location to the bottom of all your emails. Very handy if you have your own company, or if you want everyone to get to your party on time.

There are a number of other labs features you can try out, let us know which one you use, and which one you like most, I think in terms of usefulness the Youtube one wins my award.

Tags: Email, gmail, sharing

Minimal Music Sharing

joshua — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:09:33 +0000

With conventional music distribution methods becoming less and less effective with every year and the associated corporations increasingly desperate a growing group of services have been springing up to offer way for people news ways to share music.

Some, like LastFM, offer a comprehensive service in which you have a profile and can interact with other lastFM users. Bands can be commented on and reviewed and based on your listening habits new bands will be suggested to you.

The latest start-up to cause the biggest buzz has been Muxtape, a highly minimal music may upload only 12 songs to their ‘muxtape’. It’s a struggle to condense your entire collection into just a dozen songs, but what it does do is guarantee the quality of people’s muxtapes.

In fact it would be a great way to discover new songs, except that a search function is not included in the service. Luckily someone else started up MuxSearch recently.

If you like these minimal song sharing services then why not try Tiny Song? First simply search for the song, select it from the list it suggests. From here you can send the link to a friend to listen to.

The link will open the song up in Grooveshark and begin streaming instantly. You’ll find it sure beats telling someone to go download a song, then having to download it for them when they can’t find it, then having them not like it anyway.

Forget feature filled startups, these are the way to go.

Tags: music, muxtape, sharing, streaming, tiny song

Google Reader integrates with Google Talk

Daniel Pataki — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:20:19 +0000

To me it really seems like Google is integrating everything they have. In the end they will just have one app, named GOOGLE and it will do everything from sending emails, sharing photos, making the dinner and flushing the toilet. Of course this is web 2.0, so you will be able to geotag and share where and what toilet you have just flushed.

Well, on to the point. Google has put a fun feature in Google Reader, the ability to see your Google Talk friends’ shared items. You can simply click on the share icon under each feed entry and it will also be available in your shared items.

This way you sort of create a feed of feeds, sharing all your favorite items. These will be available to others through the “Friends’ shared items” in the top left. This is one of the best sharing features I’ve seen, it is very much like the awesome system Stumbleupon uses. It is easy to share and easy to view shared items, a paradise for the active people among us.

Tags: google reader, reader, sharing

Try Microsoft Windows Home Server for 120 Days

Martin — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:31:21 +0000

I’m skeptical ifMicrosoft’s Windows Home Server will be a success story for Microsoft. It is based on Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 but created with simplicity in mind. Many households have more than one computer and Windows Home Server is intended to be of use for those households. It provides remote access, sharing, streaming and storage solutions for home networks.

Some of the key features are simplicity of use, backup capabilities, a single store pool that works without drive letters and content that can be shared with other computers and devices including the Xbox. This can be useful but I personally don’t need a Home Server to do most of these things.

But that is me and others might think different. A good way to see if Windows Home Server is useful for you would be to order a 120 day fully functional trial version from Microsoft. The only catch is that you have to pay money for it. Europeans pay around €7 which means that users from the United States will probably pay $10 for the package that will be send to your location.

It’s not a bad bargain especially if you think this could be useful for you. One DVD and two CDs will be shipped actually:

Windows Home Server Installation DVD
Windows Home Server Connector CD
Home Computer Restore CD

The requirements for installing Windows Home Server are:

Computer with 1 GHz Pentium III (or equivalent) or faster processor
512 MB of RAM or more
70 GB or larger ATA, SATA, or SCSI hard drive as the primary hard drive and any number of additional hard drives of any size
DVD drive—your home server must be capable of booting from this drive
VGA or higher-resolution monitor for software installation
Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device (needed only during initial home server software installation)
100 Mbps or faster Ethernet network interface card

And finally the requirements to run it:

Internet broadband router/firewall device with a 100 Mbps or faster wired Ethernet connection for your home server
Windows Home Server assumes that your home computers get their IP address from the router/firewall device on your home network
Broadband connection (fees may apply)

What I like is the option to schedule regular backups from all computers connected to the network. All of this can be done with each computer manually as well but it sure eases the burden to do all of this from one central computer.

The more difficulty task is to find the hardware to run the homeserver. You could use an old computer that meets the requirements for this, but if you do not have an old one you might have to buy one. Several manufacturers already announced home servers especially for Windows Home server.

Read More:

Windows Home Server 120 days trial

Tags: network, sharing, windows home server

Share the iTunes Library on a network

Martin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:16:52 +0000

I don’t like the iTunes software that much – it is slow and big and the only reason for me to use it is that it is the offical software that comes with the iPod. I recently ran into a problem which was fixed pretty fast by a quick tip that I found at one tip a day. I assume that iTunes is already installed at least on your main computer and you want to access the same library of songs that are stored on the main computer.

You need to locate the file iTunes Library.itl on this computer which is usually stored in username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes. You need to share the folder iTunes. To do this right-click the iTunes folder and select Sharing and Security from the context menu. If there is no Sharing and Security entry you will have to enable simple file sharing by clicking on Tools and selecting Folder Options.

Click on the view tab and activate simple file sharing in the advanced settings (scroll down). Enable the options ‘Share this folder in the network’ and ‘Allow network users to change my files’ in Sharing and Security.

The final step would be to start iTunes on the other computer and hold down the shift key which will open a menu during startup. Select Choose Library and select the iTunes Library.itl file from the main computer.

That’s it. You can now access your iTunes configuration from the second computer as well and all changes made will be global. You can repeat the process if you have more than two computer.

Tags: apple, iPod, itunes, share library, sharing, tip, trick

gHacks technology news » sharing

How to Make Google Reader a Bookmarking and Sharing Powerhouse

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