Online Reading: Update for 2007

I posted two articles previously on how I handle my updated reading. I have made some refinements in the past year, and I thought I would share them.

The Tools

Google Reader

I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader because of the ability to assign more than one category to a blog. All of my blog reading goes in here, and those items I’m not sure if I want to add to the always-read list reside in a “probation” category.

Firefox Del.Icio.Us Post Add-in

This add-in for Firefox takes care of the work of putting the page into a place where I can later retrieve it

Short Keys

This Windows application allows me to make short work of filing the pages I want to read.

Del.Icio.Us

Del.icio.us is now my bookmark manager. I do all my bookmarking there, and download them as needed to my PDA and home page. I find it much easier to maintain my bookmarks using this service.

The Technique For Gathering Reading

1. I open up Google Reader in Firefox. I close all other tabs to make sure that I don’t have extra stuff being put into the bookmarks.
2. For each feed, I view the list mode. If I want to read the article, I will star it, then mark all articles read. I repeat this for each feed.
3. When I am done marking articles, I switch to the starred items. I view this in expanded mode and right click each article title to open it in a new tab.
4. Once all articles are opened, I un-star all articles and close the Google Reader tab.
5. For each open tab, I click on the Del.icio.us Post add-in button on my tool bar. I press end, then enter my shortcut for reading. Shortkeys will tab down to the tag field, type in “@Read”, select OK, then close the tab in my browser. I repeat this for all articles.

The Technique for Reading

To read my list, I open up del.icio.us, then navigate to my @Read category. I go to the bottom of the list so that I get to the oldest articles first, then open 5 up in new tabs. I read each one, and either place it into @Action, or another del.icio.us tag category and close the tab. When I’m back at the del.icio.us tab, a browser refresh shows me those articles that can be deleted, and I do that.

Summary

This processing system has simplified my life immensely. I no longer have to cut and paste into another application, or worry about links getting lost. I can also immediately re-file an article if I want to maintain a reference to it.