Learning to share all over again

Socializing in Google Reader vs. Bloglines

Over a year ago I started using Google Reader as my aggregator and I added a little widget to my blog’s sidebar for my “Shared Items” — posts from my RSS subscriptions that I found interesting, amusing, or just plain weird.  In Google Reader it’s very easy to just click “Share” (or hit Shift + S) and – voila – the post you’re reading is in your Shared Items.

And I like to share, by golly.

But part of sharing is the exchange, the two-way street, the trading off… I’m not getting enough of that.

Let’s start with Bloglines – the original aggregator for many people in my little circles.  In Bloglines, it is fairly easy to share, albeit indirectly.  You subscribe to a feed, you click on “Subscribers” and then you get a handy-dandy list of the public subscribers.  You see a name you recognize and you click on it to find other feeds that like-minded friend is reading.   You subscribe to the ones you like and all that wholesome blog love is passed along.

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In Google Reader, you have to already be connected with people on Google Talk (Gmail’s chat) in order for their Shared Items to show up in your feeds. Otherwise, you have to get the URL of their Shared Items from their blog (which is how I peak over the shoulder of Robert Scoble, the techie tasmanian devil) or from them directly.

Of course, it helps if they’re using Google Reader and marking items to be shared in the first place.  I can see from my “Friends” tab in Reader’s Settings that several people I know are using Google Reader, but none of them have any Shared Items.  From what I’ve seen, you can’t just search for like-minded folks on Google Reader and see what kind of feeds those people are reading. If there is a way, please … um… share.  Thanks!

On the other hand, when people are willing to share, there are many wonderful ways to do this in Reader.  For example, I have all my feeds sorted into folders (ie. art, food, library, tech) but when I come across a specific post that I want to file away for a specific purpose, I edit the tags (ie. brainstorm, comment, products, tips).  So if I want to share the stuff I’m reading with people in certain contexts, I can make a whole folder of several feeds public – like “libraries” – or I can make a tag of specific posts public – like “tips“… Actually, in Reader folders and tags are technically the same thing but you can see from the image to the left that Google will display them differently in the sidebar, depending on how you’re using them.

So if you’re using Google Reader and you’re Sharing stuff (or you’re going to start now    ) please send me a line or send me your feed’s address.  I’d love to peak over your shoulder, too.  C’mon. I’m a librarian. What people read fascinates me.

In summary, here’s a gloss of sharing options in Google Reader and Bloglines, to the extent that I’ve figured them out.  If you can think of more details to add, I’m happy to hear them.

Google Reader	Bloglines
Finding other users: contacts on Google Talk direct URL Sharing levels: default is everything private except Shared Items individual folders / tags can be Shared, but the URL has to be provided in order for people to know about it	Finding other users: public subscribers on common subscriptions direct URL Sharing levels: default is private, but once you turn on “public” everything becomes public all at once and you have to individually mark feeds as “private” … sort of the opposite of Google Reader

Time Travel

Not long ago I discovered a blog of historical photos called Shorpy, named after a young boy who worked in a coal mine.   Many of the photographs are black-and-white, many from the 1920s — my favorite decade of all decades.  Today’s photo is very apropos, considering I went to my first dance class last night.  None of the dancers in this photo look all that thrilled, granted, but who knows how long they’ve been at this dance marathon.  My favorite part?  The outfit of the guy on the far left.  I would love to dress like that.

That sums it up

I was looking for a good dose of humor this morning, so I turned right away to Piled Higher and Deeper.  I found two comics that really express everything I could want to say about…

1. Life

and 2. Politics

Reading what I wrote

Occasionally I like to glance over the stats for this little blog and see which pages people find the most often. I try to just ignore that the post with the car crash pictures is far and away the most popular, week after week. I’m not even going to link back to it right now.

But in the top three of popular pages is one of my tags. Yes, a tag. The weird tag, specifically. So I looked over the page to see what was there … a lot of literary-ish stuff mostly, talking about Bukowski and Tom Waits and even a little Ray Bradbury.

But the post that caught my eye – today of all days – was a post about Father’s Day from two years ago when my dad wasn’t speaking to me. I am happy to report that, not only did my dad and I have a good long conversation on the phone today, but we even agreed about something! Namely, that the oil companies roadblock any feasible alternative energy initiatives, but anyway… it’s a good feeling to look back and know that progress has been made. Very important progress. Love you, Dad.

Printer’s Devil am I

[ Click on the photo to see a slideshow of pics from class.]

For our final project in Letterpress Printing, we’re each creating a small broadside which will all be put together into a folio.  My broadside is a short Stephen Crane poem in a beautiful blue ink.  I’ll be hand-lettering the colophon with an old calligraphy pen, (for better or worse).

In the Flickr photos I mention another Pablo Neruda translation, which I printed for one of the first projects in class.  Here it is:

Verb (originally Verbo)   by Pablo Neruda (tr. Sara Quinn Thompson)

I’m going to rumple this word,
I’m going to twist it,
yes,
it is much too smooth
it’s as if a great dog or great river
with tongue or water passed over it
for many years.

I want that in the word
there can be seen the roughness
the metallic salt
the toothless strength
of the land,
the blood
of those who have spoken and those who have not.

I want to see the thirst
inside those syllables
I want to touch the fire
in that sound:
I want to feel the darkness
of the cry. I want
words as rough
as virgin stones.

Aesthetic Decisions

This summer I indulged myself with a special class.  I even get credit for it.  The class is Letterpress Printing and, sure enough, we set type by hand and print it.

Today, however, was a field trip of sorts.  We visited the Rare Book & Manuscript Library here at UIUC, where we were treated to a special showing of fine typographic and illustrative examples. We saw a fragment of a Gutenberg Bible as well as several pieces from history’s great printers: Aldus Manutius, Nicolas Jenson, the controversial William Morris, and the incredible Hermann Zapf.

The theme (for me) was the deliberate care given to details.  Pick up a book, any book.  Go on, I dare you.  What kind of aesthetics went into this volume you’re holding?  There’s the typeface, of course, but look at all the stuff around and between the text… yes, the space.  The room for your eyes to breathe. In a book of poetry this can be especially beautiful.  Imagine the page in front of you is a reverse image — a black background with a white foreground.  Try to trick your eyes so that the blank spaces stand out to you. … Now bring the text back to the foreground.

Is that not beautiful?