Some of the applications I use most often aren't desktop apps, they're web apps that I access through a web browser. Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Docs, for example. GMDesk is an Adobe AIR-based client for these and other Google-based services. It's based on the idea that you shouldn't have to fire up a web browser just to check your email.
The concept is sound, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. We've seen other attempts at taking web apps away from the browser. Bubbles and Mozilla Prism are two examples. But as with those programs, GMDesk just doesn't seem to offer much functionality that you couldn't get from a browser. What's more, while Prism and Bubbles offer stripped-down browser-style windows that tend to be a little lighter on your computer's RAM usage than Firefox or Internet Explorer, GMDesk eats 100+ MB of RAM as soon as you launch it.
There are two other factors that make GMDesk a bit limiting. First, the fonts in Gmail are kind of small and awkward to read. And second, you can only have one window open at a time. So if you like to keep both Gmail and Google Reader open throughout the day, you're going to want to fire up a web browser.
That isn't to say that GMDesk is useless. If the developer can reduce the RAM usage, and/or allow you to open multiple windows or multiple tabs, it would be nice for Gmail addicts to keep a window open all day while resisting the temptation to do some web surfing when they should be working.
At first glance, the latest version of RSS Bandit looks just like pretty much every other desktop RSS reader for Windows. In other words, it looks like Outlook. But this week saw the released of RSS Bandit 1.7 Alpha with one killer new feature: support for synchronization with your Google Reader or NewsGator feeds.
Here's how it works. You download and install the open source application, and then click the File menu and select Synchronize Feeds. Pick your service and enter your login information and RSS Bandit will import your feed list in a matter of seconds. Any actions you take using the desktop reader should then be reflected at your online feed reader. You can mark items as reader, unread, or shared. And you can subscribe to feeds or remove feeds using RSS Bandit and the changes should apply to your online account.
At least that's the theory. In practice, we're still waiting for our changes to show up in Google Reader. We read a few items, unsubscribed from a feed, and over an hour later Google Reader is showing no sign that it's noticed. This is still Alpha software, so it's possible speedier updates could come at a later date.
RSS Bandit 1.7 Alpha also adds a new podcast download manager.
It's been a while since we've seen a compelling new browser start page. There was a real flurry of start pages a year or two ago when the likes of Google Personalized Start Page (now iGoogle), NetVibes, Pageflakes, and a myriad of other copycat sites launched. Strangely, even with such an amazing variety of start pages to choose from, we've never found any of them to be particularly compelling.
Then we were introduced to Feedly. Feedly is a start page that only works in Firefox, because it requires a Firefox browser extension to run. It's actually a locally hosted page that goes out and grabs information feed reader sites and social networks that you use, and presents it to you in a friendly magazine style layout.
Feedly can go through your Firefox bookmarks, as well as your My Yahoo! page, NetVibes, Bloglines, Twitter, FriendFeed, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail accounts to find relevant information to present to you. If we can offer one tip, it would be to choose carefully. When setting up our page, we checked every possible option, and ended up with far too many feeds, and too many feeds that we had lost interest in that were still in some account somewhere that Feedly found.
Feedly also has a very tight integration with Google Reader, and anything that you read in Feedly will be marked as read in Google Reader, and vice versa. This is cool, but it's also dangerous, since and feeds that you add to Feedly (or that it finds) are automatically added to your Google Reader account. So again, choose carefully what feeds you want to be seeing in Feedly, as they will affect your Google Reader account.
But once it's all set up, Feedly is a very useful and elegantly done start page - so much so, that we haven't been compelled to remove it. And since no other start page has captured our interest, that's certainly something.
Google rolled out an improved iPhone interface for Google Reader this week, and here's something neat you can do with it: Add it to your Firefox sidebar. While you can open practically any web site in a Firefox sidebar, some web pages are better suited to the sidebar than others. And the iPhone version of Google Reader fits the bill because unlike the full version of Reader, it's designed for small, narrow screens. And fortunately, you don't need an iPhone to access the new interface.
So here's how to add Google Reader to your sidebar:
Create a new bookmark in your bookmark manager, or by right-clicking on your bookmark toolbar.
Make sure to check the box that says "Load this bookmark in the sidebar."
And that's it. Click on your bookmark and you should see the iPhone version of Google Reader. Bear in mind that while it's easier to navigate the new iPhone interface than the old one, Google Reader does still look best in full screen.
Here are a few other pages that work well in the Firefox sidebar:
Love Google Reader, but wish there was a desktop version of the RSS reader so you didn't have to open a web browser every time you want read your feeds? ReadAir is an Adobe AIR-based utility that lets you launch Google Reader as a standalone application. Since it's built on AIR, ReadAir runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Currently the program's default skin has an OS X look and feel, but the program will be skinnable in the future.
Overall, ReadAir does a pretty good job of making Google Reader feel like even more of a desktop application than it already does. But there's one major feature missing: keyboard shortcuts. We kept finding ourselves clicking J hoping we could view the next story without grabbing our mouse. But no dice. Future versions of ReadAir will include keyboard shortcuts and the ability to view more than 20 items per feed. And at that point it my actually be worth downloading and using ReadAir. For now it's pretty much a pretty proof of concept.
Last year two services launched, giving bloggers easy access to threaded comments, spam control, avatars, and other advanced features. Disqus and Intense Debate also let you create a single profile which you can use to leave comments on any participating blog or web site. No need to register for each individual blog.
And since last year, thousands of web sites have adopted these two commenting systems. Considering there are millions of blogs out there, that's just a drop in the bucket. But every filled bucket starts with a single drop. Or something like that. Anyway, if any of the blogs you follow use Disqus, gReader Comments is a pretty nifty Firefox plugin that will let you see comments in Google Reader without clicking through to the blog.
Once you install gReader Comments, you should notice a new box in your Google Reader post windows that says Comments. Click on this box and a Disqus window will pop up showing you the comments left on the post and offering you the chance to leave your own comments.
The plugin still needs some work. We tested it with Firefox 2.0.0.14 and Firefox 3 beta 5, and in both browsers gReader Comments failed to accurately show how many comments each post had. At first it would show no comments, and then when you click the box on a post that actually has, say 3 comments, all the boxes may say 3 comments whether here are actually comments or not. But with a little more work, this could be an extraordinarily useful plugin for anyone who spends most of their time online in Google Reader.
Google Reader users have long had the option of sharing items from their feeds. Just click the share button and anyone who knows the URL of your shared item feed can subscribe or view your shared items in a blog-like format. A few months ago, Google even started showing your shared items to your Gmail contacts automatically. But if you wanted to share items or web pages from sites that you didn't subscribe to, you were out of luck.
Now Google has launched several new tools that turn Google Reader into a bit more of a blogging/communication tool. There's a new browser bookmarklet that you can use to share any item on the web, whether the site has an RSS feed or not. Google has alsdo added a new Notes section to Google Reader that lets you enter text notes to share with your contacts. You can either enter a standalone note or click the "share with note" button on any article you're looking at in Google Reader to add your thoughts to a shared item.
You can also choose one of four graphic headers for your shared items page. There's the default Google Reader icon, ice cream, ninjas, or sea. No, we have no idea why these four, but we wouldn't be surprised to see Google add to the list of graphics later.
How many of the applications you use on a daily basis are web-based as opposed to locally installed native applications? For me, the answer is way more than I ever would have expected.
Had you asked me this question a few years ago, I would have vehemently denied that the future of development is on the web. As much as I could see and understand the value of a ubiquitously available web-based application, there's just no way to approach the level of power and integration (not to mention the ability to be always-available) that is possible with well conceived and developed desktop software.
Of course, back then I didn't imagine that web applications could become as useful as Google Calendar or Remember the Milk. I also didn't imagine that light - yet still useful - versions of these apps would be available from my mobile phone almost wherever I was.
Most of these are probably pretty familiar names, but one is a newcomer in the web space: Evernote. Still in beta, the new version of Evernote contains a full-featured web version, but synchronizes seamlessly with desktop software on either Windows or Mac platforms. And it's a breath of fresh air.
We're pretty proud of everything we write around here, and we kind of think you should take the time to read each article posted on Download Squad. But we understand you're busy and you might not always have time to read every article on this or other sites. Last year, AideRSS offered a way to read just the top stories by assigning a PostRank to each article. And now AideRSS has made things even easier by launching a Firefox plugin that works with Google Reader.
How does it work? Basically, AideRSS will scan each item in each feed to find the items with the most comments, votes on Digg, inbound links, tags on del.icio.us and other data. Then the items will be assigned a PostRank from 1-10. What the browser plugin does is display the PostRank next to each item and add a filter box to the top of your Google Reader window. Only want to see posts with a PostRank of 3 or higher? Select "Good," from the drop-down menu. All the ones and 2s will be fade into the background. You can filter out even more posts by selecting "Great," or "Best."
The AideRSS Firefox plugin is in private beta, but the first 50 Download Squad readers to sign up by clicking on the "Read" link below can get in on the beta today.
Many web sites (including Download Squad) have an uncanny way of appearing attractive whether you view them on a full sized desktop web browser or a mobile web browser on your tiny cellphone screen. But if you don't have the time, energy, or programming expertise to create a mobile version of your web site, or if you want to read someone else's web site on your cellphone, there are a few easy ways to create cellphone-friendly versions of any site.
A while back we looked at MoFuse, a free service that strips away all of the unnecessary content on any site and gives you a mobile version optimized for small screens and low bandwidth internet connections. But you can achieve the same results using Google Reader.
All you have to do is add an RSS feed to the end of this URL: http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/. For example, http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/social-software/rss.xml will bring up a basic page with a list of Download Squad stories about social software. For some reason our main RSS feed doesn't seem to work, so this solution doesn't appear to be one size fits all. But it only takes a few seconds to find out if your site's feed will work. If it does, you can give your blog visitors easy access to a mobile version of your page, or you can create a series of bookmarks for your favorite web sites on your mobile phone.
Ever with there was a way to track popular news/blog posts by following Google Reader shared item feeds without, you know, subscribing to dozens of feeds? The big problem with link blogs and shared item feeds is that if you subscribe to a bunch, there's a pretty good chance you're going to wind up seeing the same articles over and over. ReadBurner makes it possible to track shared items from some of the blogosphere's opinion leaders without subscribing directly to their blogs.
Here's how it works. Developer Alexander Marktl has taken the shared item feeds from a number of well known bloggers.. ReadBurner examines those feeds and determines which items are being shared the most often. You can sort the list by Currently Popular, Popular This Week, Most Popular All Time, or Most Recent.
ReadBurner is still in pretty early Alpha testing. Up until yesterday the site didn't even have a registered domain. But if you're the sort of person that can't get enough of Techmeme and other news tracking sites, ReadBurner might be worth keeping an eye on.
A few weeks ago Google launched a new feature that makes Google Reader a bit more social. Whenever you mark an item as "Shared," your Gmail/Google Talk contacts will be able to find that article by following a new "Friends' shared items" link in Google Reader.
Now here's the thing: Google Reader shared items have always been available to the public. But in order to find a shared item feed you need to enter a rather complicated string of characters in your web browser's URL bar. The result is that you're probably not going to find anyone's shared items unless they give you a link. Some people have made their shared items available to the public buy putting a link on their blog. Robert Scoble is famously almost as proud of his "link blog," as he is of his actual blog. But other readers assumed they had some level of privacy and only shared items with a handful of friends.
Now that anyone you've ever corresponded with over Google Talk can see your shared items, you might be a bit more careful of what you share. And some people aren't particularly pleased with that situation.
Is the new Google Reader shared items feature an invasion of privacy? We're going to go out on a limb here and say no. If you don't want the whole world to see your shared items, there's an easy answer: don't click the share button. But we can imagine plenty of situations where you would want to share some stories with the whole world and other stories with just a select group of people. Or where you might want to be able to differentiate between "friends," and family, colleagues or other people who might not find some of your shared items so amusing.
So while we don't think Google necessarily did anything wrong by adding this feature, we don't really understand why the feature is one size fits all. There's no option for users to opt out of having their items shared other than to stop sharing items at all. And there's no way to share your items with some friends, but not others.
What do you think? Is the new Google Reader friends' shared items feature a privacy violation or just a poorly implemented attempt to make RSS reading a more social experience?
Update: The author of the original article wrote in to let us know that it's moved. Same article, new URL.
Google has added a new way to share your favorite feeds and articles with friends, through Google Talk, aka the Gmail address book.
Google Reader has included a "Share" button for a while now, but if you wanted people to actually read your shared listings, you had to direct them to a URL or RSS feed. Now your Google Talk contacts can also see the items you're sharing on their Google Reader page.
Next time you login to Google Reader, you should notice a few of your Google Talk contacts' names hanging out in the navigation panel on the left side of the screen. Google Reader will tell you how many items they're sharing, and let you scroll through their shared item feed as if you have subscribed to it. You can also manage your friends list so that only certain people can see your shared items.
This is a great way to check in with friends to get feed recommendations for websites you might have never visited before, or interesting articles that you have passed by. Or is it Google's stealth social network in the works?
It's a weekday, so we probably shouldn't be surprised to see a couple of updates from the Google camp. There are two new features in Google Reader. One could make your life a bit easier, while the other could do the same -- or it could become a huge time sink.
The first new feature is drag and drop feed organization. In other words, you don't need to use drop down menus to place feeds in a new folder, just click and drag it into the folder where it belongs.
The second feature is personalized feed recommendations. Google takes a look at your subscribed feeds and web search history and tries to find feeds that match your tastes. While this is great if you're always looking for new blogs to add to your feed list, if you're someone who already spends way too much of your day sifting through feeds in Google Reader, this feature could keep you from ever turning your computer off. Ever. Not that we speak from experience.
Google has also rolled out one significant update to Blogger today: you can now leave comments on blogs using OpenID. Up until now you needed a Blogger or Google account if you didn't want to leave an anonymous post.
Ionut Alex Chitu over at Google Operating System has spotted a few new updates from the Google camp today.
First up is faster RSS updates in Google Reader. Until recently, Google would only update some feeds once an hour, while less popular feeds would only be refreshed every three hours or so. Considering the fact that Google has recently managed to launch search engine technology that manages to index web pages and blogs nearly instantaneously, this always struck us as a bit odd. But Chitu reports that he's starting to notice his feeds being updated almost immediately, and based on our experience with Google Reader so far today, we're inclined to believe him.
Chitu's other discovery of the day is the fact that Google has launched a mobile version of Google Notebook. Again, this shouldn't be that exciting, since Google has long offered mobile versions of most of its services. But so far, Google Notebook has been absent from that list, which was a real shame, because the ability to save web pages and notes on your desktop and access them on your mobile phone seems like a no-brainer to us. Apparently Google has finally agreed, since www.google.com/notebook/m now directs you to a version of Google Notebook optimized for the small screen.
