10 Cool Google Reader Buttons You Can Use to Post Feed Content

10 Cool Google Reader Buttons You Can Use to Post Feed Content: "

The Google Reader team has been rolling out features one after the another to make it more social and fun to use. We always love functionality that has room for experimentation and clever tricks. Be it the auto response in Gmail or the new Google Reader ‘Send-To’ menu.

The Google Reader Send-To button lets you post feed articles to Twitter, Delicious, Blogger, Posterous, Digg, Tumblr and more. If you have not done so you need to go to your Google Reader settings then to the ‘Send To’ tab and choose the sites/services you want to enable. There are already 10+ services and sites you can choose from, however the real action lies a little below.

You can create your own custom menu entries to do all kinds of interesting stuff with the feed articles. Let me explain how:

Google Reader offers you certain placeholders viz MakeUseOf.com, 10 Cool Google Reader Buttons You Can Use to Post Feed Content, http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/jBzpQAxco6U/ and which represent the Site, Title, URL and shortened URL of the feed entry you are currently reading. So if you would like to search for the title of the current entry on Google you could easily use the syntax:

http://www.google.com/search?q=10 Cool Google Reader Buttons You Can Use to Post Feed Content

So as along as the site/service you are planning to add allows you to play with the URL you can easily create the menu entry for it.

Here are some examples you can add. (Some sites may not like hot linking to images/icons):

Blog to Wordpress

Name	Blog To Wordpress
URL	http://www.<yourWordpressDomainName>.com/wp-admin/press-this.php?u=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/jBzpQAxco6U/&t=10 Cool Google Reader Buttons You Can Use to Post Feed Content&s=MakeUseOf.com&v=2
Icon URL	http://s.wordpress.org/favicon.ico?3

Save as PDF

Name	Save as PDF
URL	http://savepageaspdf.pdfonline.com/pdfonline/pdfonline.asp?cURL=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/jBzpQAxco6U/
Icon URL	http://www.adobe.com/lib/com.adobe/template/icon/pdf.gif

Send to Ping.fm

Name	Send to Ping.fm
URL	http://ping.fm/ref/?link=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/jBzpQAxco6U/&title=10 Cool Google Reader Buttons You Can Use to Post Feed Content
Icon URL	http://ping.fm/_images/icons/ping.png

Share This button

Name	Share this
URL	http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&url=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/jBzpQAxco6U/&title=10 Cool Google Reader Buttons You Can Use to Post Feed Content
Icon URL	http://shareicons.com/favicon.ico

Send to Evernote

Name	Send to Evernote
URL	http://www.evernote.com/grclip?url=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/jBzpQAxco6U/&title=10 Cool Google Reader Buttons You Can Use to Post Feed Content
Icon URL	http://s.wordpress.org/favicon.ico?3

Identi.ca

Name	Identi.ca
URL	http://identi.ca/?action=newnotice&status_textarea=%E2%80%9C10 Cool Google Reader Buttons You Can Use to Post Feed Content%E2%80%9d%3a%20
Icon URL	http://identi.ca/favicon.ico

View full text of partial feeds

Name	Full Text Feed
URL	http://fivefilters.org/content-only/makefulltextfeed.php?url=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/jBzpQAxco6U/
Icon URL	http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1121/1430385323_4d4351d815.jpg

Translate an Article

Name	Google Translate
URL	http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/jBzpQAxco6U/
Icon URL	http://translate.google.com/favicon.ico

Archive with Iterasi

Name	Iterasi
URL	https://www.iterasi.net/Capture.aspx?q=n&v=1.0&u=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/jBzpQAxco6U/
Icon URL	https://www.iterasi.net/favicon.ico

Speed Read with Zap Reader

Name	Zap Reader
URL	http://www.zapreader.com/reader?URL=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/jBzpQAxco6U/
Icon URL	http://zapreader.com/favicon.ico

Make sure you disable the popup blocker for Google Reader as most of these will open as a popup.

If you have some other cool send to tricks up your sleeve then share with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Llegué a los 52!

Los compañeros de oficina me hicieron la maldad de prepar un bizocho para celebrar mis 52!

Do an Internet Speed Test with SpeedTest

Do an Internet Speed Test with SpeedTest: "

I have used lots of different programs, websites and services to try and determine my actual speeds of my Internet lines.

Have you?

Of course you want to make sure that you are getting what you pay for and with all the competition nowadays providers are promising lots more than they used to.

If you choose your provider because they say they can provide 30 mbps up and down how can you be sure that they really are?

I have found a nifty Internet speed test service called Speedtest and they make it ridiculously easy! Check it out.

When you navigate to the website you will see this:

If you hover your mouse over the top banner, identifying your city and state, it will turn into a Begin Test button. Click it to begin with the default server.

A speedometer will appear and it will start to go up and down for your upload and download speed as the test runs. It will take a few minutes or seconds depending on the speed of your line.

When your Internet speed test is complete you will see a screen similar to the following with your statistics.

You will also be able to re-run the test or run it against another server in a different location by hitting these buttons:

Make sure you don’t have anything hogging up your line like other users or torrents downloading and then when you are satisfied with your results you can look at them and compare them against the promises the carrier made to you. Here were mine for a remote office with a 30/30 circuit. This should be 30 Mbits up and down and I got pretty close to my mark as you can see below:

I was happy with my Internet speed test results for the office but my home line was not up to what the carrier said! Damn you OptOnline! We would love to hear about your carriers and your speed. Are they on point?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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LifeIO: Check Your Email, Read Feeds, Post to Twitter, Keep Notes & More From One Cool Site

LifeIO: Check Your Email, Read Feeds, Post to Twitter, Keep Notes & More From One Cool Site: "

If a clever name is bound to attract attention from geeks and early adopters, a pompous spec sheet usually spells disappointment, whether it’s integration problems, clutter or bugs. I’m happy to say that although LifeIO is in alpha testing, it’s a solid web app that overall delivers on its promise. Unless the developer team turns a 360, the September public beta should be a success for parent company ATTAP (an acronym for ‘All things to all people’).

What does LifeIO bring in the already overcrowded space of web applications? Well, the concept itself is not exactly new, but the implementation is the one of the best I’ve seen so far. Integration is good when it’s done right. Think about Apple products – they all fit together from the hardware to software and support.

It’s much more convenient to have everything you need to manage your online social life in one place, especially if it does a great job at interfacing with all that information; allowing you to sift through stuff that you want to see. Having all the tools you need in a sleek one stop shop – how could you say no to that? LifeIo is the free, complete productivity suite for web 2.0.

LifeIO, like the name suggests, aims to be the bus on which information travels to and from you, hence IO(input/output), by aggregating your email, RSS, contacts, social networking accounts, calendar, tasks and even a basic note taking application. Add another couple of new features and applications in the mix, and you might be on your way to the online operating system.

Even more tech-oriented people will recognize that those types of apps represent 90% of the functionality you need day-to-day. A bit of polish here and there, integration with lightweight OS (Google Chrome OS?) via something like Mozilla Prism and you might have just stumbled on the next paradigm shift in computing.

Now that we’ve built up a bit of excitement about LifeOS, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. The design is simple and straightforward; Mac OS users will notice that someone has been reading up on the Apple User Interface Development Guidelines. A bar at the top contains the list of available applications:

• Now – aggregates information from all the other applications and brings them together into one window. The user can then glance at the RSS feeds, email, upcoming calendar events and tasks without navigating to the respective application.


• Mail – will import email from the major service providers (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL) as well as standard POP mailboxes, so you can check your email online from anywhere. Unfortunately, the wizard will import your Gmail via POP by default, but you can manually set up IMAP if you wish. The interface is rather barebones at the moment, and represents a downgrade for someone used with Gmail’s filters, labels, add-ons and incredibly fast search function. That being said, Yahoo Mail users will be glad to have a responsive, simple interface to check email anywhere. A big plus is the preview function; just hover the mouse over a message and a (small font) text-only version of the message will pop up like a ‘Tool Tip’ or Growl notification.
  

  

  
  


• Calendar – nothing fancy, just straight-up usability. All the important features are covered. If you’re used to iCal or Google Cal, the switch couldn’t be easier.


• To-do – you’ve guessed it, it’s a task management application. While it certainly doesn’t compete with OmniFocus, it has more functionality than Google Tasks. It’s got Due Date fields, importance and categories.


• Notes – a stepchild of WordPad and TextEdit, it hasn’t got the functionality of Google Docs, but works for quick note taking.


• RSS reader – is essentially a clone of Google Reader, complete with the left sidebar and everything else you could expect. One hiccup though, the actual articles will open in a separate window instead of expanding inside the list.


• Social – a bit underpowered for now, the Social application currently will only integrate with Twitter. It lets you see your contact’s tweets and post your own. A few screenshots I saw of upcoming version include Flickr integration, and I’m sure that they will add more services with time.
  

  

  
  


• Shopping – a search + RSS subscribing features will make sure you’ll be always up to date with prices on Amazon, Craigslist, Yahoo, iTunes and Fandango.


• Settings – another striking resemblance with OS X, this app provides quick access to all available settings.

If you‘re like me, you’re getting worried just about now. LifeIO sounds cool, but can I trust it with my login information for Google, Twitter and maybe more? Bruce Specter is not new to the scene; he’s the guy that made Web Cal – Yahoo’s calendar program. Plus, everything is transferred via https.

How about a surprise? The first 50 users to sign up with this link will get into the private beta right now. For more cool web apps reviews, you should definitely check out this page.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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How To Have a Blog You Don’t Have To Babysit

How To Have a Blog You Don’t Have To Babysit: "

There are countless opportunities on the Internet to capture a niche market where people are searching for information that you may be able to provide. If you do a good enough job, you could capture a tremendous audience, a huge following, and of course in the blogosphere all of that equals fantastic advertising revenue and sales conversions. There are usually far more great opportunities and ideas out there than you’ll have time for, so it’s important to understand how to have a blog that you don’t need to constantly struggle with.

What’s so difficult about building a successful blog? It’s the element that causes most aspiring bloggers to fail – the lack of time to post quality content and updates to the blog, and every professional blogger knows that if you don’t provide constant updates to your blog, people get bored and eventually stop returning to check out if you’ve published anything new. I’m just as guilty of it as the next blogger. So I’ve spent some time digging through what tools and options are available to bloggers who want to know how to have a blog that doesn’t take so much work and effort, but still keeps readers interested. In this article I’ll outline a few great widgets and resources that can help.

How to Have a Blog Auto-Update With Embedded RSS Feeds

The most common approach when someone wants to have a blog with automatically updated content is to embed the RSS feed of someone else’s website or blog onto your site sidebar. There are many different ways to accomplish this, such as using a Javascript or Flash widget that serves as an embedded feed reader right on your web page. My own personal choice is the Google AJAX Feed API.

I like this one because it’s so fast and simple to set up. You just choose the formatting, enter the keywords that you want feeds for, and let Google do the work. Typing "SEO" returned the feed link for SEO.com – good enough for me. Clicking on the "Generate Code" button generates the code that you can copy and paste into your blog sidebar. In my case, I use Wordpress for all of my blogs, so I just go into the Text/HTML widget for the sidebar and paste the code Google provided.

After saving the changes, the widget gets embedded directly into the sidebar of the blog, essentially an embedded feed reader providing content from the SEO.com feed.

Google is obviously the easiest, but if you want a bit more ability to customize the embedded feed, you’ll want to consider adding any one of the many RSS feed widgets out there. You can find a few of those resources in Aibek’s article on 80+ Tools For Successful Blogging.

Embedded Widgets With Cool Content

While your blog is most likely very much text based, in this Web 2.0 world there’s so much more that people are looking for. If you can make your blog a fun and exciting place to check out by providing a wide variety of many types of content, you’ll end up collecting more readers much more quickly. The type of content you want to offer is limited only by your own imagination.

For example, FlashCountdownTimer embeds a cool-looking countdown clock on your site, or another great example is HeyZap, which lets you embed games right on your own blog. Widgetbox has always been my favorite source for these kind of widgets that you can embed anywhere on your blog. A couple of my favorite widgets that I find adds tremendous functionality to any blog includes the Skype Online Status Widget, and the Flickr Slideshow Widget.

The Skype status widget displays your current online or offline Skype status to folks who visit your blog – this gives your readers the feel that the blog is a very direct connection to you, a live, breathing person.

The Flickr Slideshow widget allows you to embed a customized photo slideshow of Flickr content tailored to the sort of content you have on your blog. It’s a very cool way to offer your readers imagery about the very topics they’re interested in! These are only a few examples – explore the world of widgets to determine what sort of dynamic content you want to embed on your blog. Just remember, it updates itself – meaning no work for you!

Embedded News Related to Your Content

Another source for some great content are news sources, which are mostly offered free for the taking. Most major news sites provide a widget or embed code so you can place news updates on your blog just like you can embed a feed. My favorite is, yet again, Google News – which offers a very simple wizard to embed news onto your own blog.

You can tailor the news that gets displayed by using keywords targeted towards the content on your website. This is a valuable feature on any blog where people may be coming to you for the latest information and news on a topic – and if your blog is also the place where they can preview news headlines on the subject, they’re more likely to keep coming back. And once again – the news headlines are updated with no effort on your part.

Free Article Directories

One of the things that makes blogging so great is that you can get to know a person through their blog. For this reason, it’s not always the best option to use article directories that offer free content. On the other hand, if you have a very hot niche and simply don’t have time to write about it as often as you’d like, and you don’t have the resources to hire professional writers, then article directories are a very viable option.

It’s important to shoot for the best directories and the highest quality articles (not many article directory articles are high quality, but there are some!) I’ve used some of these free articles before, and two of my favorite directories, as well as the most popular, are EzineArticles and ArticlesBase.

EzineArticles is, by far, the best of the best when it comes to free article directories. It’ll take some sifting through writing that’s pretty horrid at times, but before long you’ll hit a gem. Just make sure that before you use the article, you keep the writer’s byline and link to their website or blog. After all, you’re getting a free article, it’s the least you can do!

Articlesbase is the place I usually go for content when I can’t find anything at EzineArticles. Articlesbase is quickly rising as a prime spot for high quality free articles. Again, if you use any on your blog, just remember to give credit where credit is due, and you’ve got yourself a goldmine of free content for your blog.

In the end, the truly professional blog is one that’s constantly updated by professional, paid writers – that’s what attracts the most readers. But if you’re just starting out on your own and you just don’t have the time to create three or more blog updates a week – the resources in this article will let you update your blog more often without having to put in very much effort.

Do you have any blogging tips and tricks that you use to keep your blog updated and fresh? Share your insights in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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