Hey, people!
New stuff on Google Reader!

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Very cool! ;D

Pretty awesome! Been looking towards this feature for a very long time.

Okay, but how can I delete notes?

Hey I used your article in testing out Google Reader's new features. I found that you can alter the original text of the article, and your friends can't tell that it was you who changed it.

http://duffsdevice.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-reader-allows-me-to.html

Wow Ryan, that's really interesting. Thanks for the tip.

As to the overall functionality of Google Reader's sharing features, essentially a toggle on/off now with notes, is pretty simple. What UI design do you find confusing Phil?

Woops, Philipp. Sorry!

This is a very weird feature for Reader. Maybe it acts as a comment feature on posts in Reader? Sort of like comments for del.icio.us?

This is basically the Facebook way of sharing items called "Post Items". I wonder if Google Reader would copy Facebook by displaying latest 'notes' in Gmail Chat window ...

How to delete my post?

The option is not visible in Firefox, but in IE. just FYI

I think this a new step to a "Twitter made in Google" :-/

Google Reader shared items, Google Reader shared items with notes, Google Reader starred items, Google Notebook, Google Bookmarks, Google Shared Stuff... too many ways to save a page.

I've not had chance to try this yet, but a friend and I both said this feature was needed on the day they launched sharing with friends. I hope they integrate the feature into Google Reader Mobile and maybe allow you to only share specific items with specific friends too, although that could get complicated. And if they could hide any shared items I've already read in my own subscriptions, that would be great!

This obviously is the start of Googles answer to Twitter.

> How to delete my post?

You can view your note and then click Unshare below it (though I tried it, I don't know if it works perfect).

> As to the overall functionality of Google Reader's sharing features,
> essentially a toggle on/off now with notes, is pretty simple.
> What UI design do you find confusing Phil?

As I mentioned I find the handling, especially of social features, cluttered and confusing. Here are some examples:

- It's not easy to understand who your friends are because you didn't opt-in to this status (sometimes you opted in to *something*, but not necessarily a friendship request). It's some magical relation implied by how often you emailed them or whether or not you answered their chat requests, I suppose; but the chat add request is far from ideal, too... because it will clutter your chat tool until you either make a "yes" or "no" decision. It's tiring to make these binary friendship decisions if you may not even know the person for long – who in real life will start a conversation with "Do you want to be my friend?"

- Google has no centralized friends manager, or do they? (The contacts manager is in Gmail, even if it's meant to be global?) If these truly are my "friends" then why do I need to manage them separately in reader – which includes them on the settings page – as well as in Gmail, Google Talk/ Chat etc.? On Google Reader's friends page, there is even a link pointing to an explanation of "Want to add or remove people from this friend list?", referring the Google Reader user to nothing but Gmail or Google Chat. (Perhaps Google is trying to define a Google friend as "People you contact a lot through your various Google applications." The idea of making this a lazy implied functionality is not bad per se, but then it should also be intuitive.)

- Why does Google Reader have a "Hide" link next to my "Google friends"? What is it's purpose? I don't want to click it because I don't know what it's for. Will I "unfriend" the person if I click it? I suppose I won't see their shared items, but it's not intuitively communicated through the interface, IMO (it would be "mute in Google Reader" or something, if that would be it, right?).

- On your shared items page, the new theme customizer does not have a save button (it apparently saves automatically, but it does not indicate this to you in any way); And why is the Shared Items theme picker on the top of your shared items list in any case at all times, taking up roughly 2/3rd of the screen?

- Apps like Friendfeed are simpler, this is simply a matter of taste, though; if you want a full RSS reader, Friendfeed is not enough, then Google Reader may be great. (Counting the navigational links or settings links in default view on my resolution, I get 12 for Friendfeed and 36 for Google Reader. Friendfeed almost feels "navigation free". And in Friendfeed you also never worry about who your friends are, because Friendfeed does not force you to define friendship status... it only has opt-in subscriptions.)

- In Google Reader, some adjustments I make to the interface are kept, some are gone the next time. For instance, collapsing the left hand navigation will still make it appear next time I load the page... but switching to List view on top will be permament to make items appear as list. This means the interface is not fully predictable.

Just to add, if I'd be using a traditional RSS reader, Google Reader might well be the best app out there for me... these are just smaller things I noticed when trying out Reader.

<< Hey I used your article in testing out Google Reader's new features. I found that you can alter the original text of the article, and your friends can't tell that it was you who changed it. >>

Hmm. That's interesting. So it looks like it's not actually sharing the item as such. Rather, it's just sharing a piece of HTML alongside the permalink to the original article and then letting you append a note.

Surely they should just allow you to just select a snippet (or snippets) from the feed item rather than allowing you to edit the entire item...?

(Added an update about the sharing/ changing issue.)

I think that google shared stuff is ridondant and now... useless.

This is a great new feature, but, it broke the "Google Newsreader to Twitter" greasemonkey script found here: http://www.codingmill.com/theforgottenmilk/articles/how-to-share-articles-from-googlereader.html#comment-156. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to fix that script?

Nice feature, if any of my friends would where google friends too :-)

Talking about Reader: Does anyone now how it(Or other Newsreaders) deals with read items which get updated later on? Will it present me the article again, or do I need to keep it unread until I'm sure that no update will be made by the author?

<< Will it present me the article again, or do I need to keep it unread until I'm sure that no update will be made by the author? >>

Once read, the feed item remains read unless the feed source issues a new ID when the updates are published. This can actually be quite annoying when it happens. For example, Gizmodo often makes tiny updates to its posts (like changing a small typo in the title or body of the post) but that results in a new post (or two) dropping into Google Reader. So if I've not read them, I can have several duplicate posts with only minor changes in Google Reader!

Usually, if the ID doesn't change, the updates are just reflected in the post which, again, can be annoying if you're looking back at a post to find it has since been edited!

I think this is a great way to make sharing RSS posts more social, but it is lacking in functionality in a few places.

If someone shares a note and I in turn share that same note, the comments left in the blockquote disappear where a thread should be created. If a thread was created, this would go a long way to creating a public conversation much like the @user system in twitter. Although some might not find this as useful as others, losing parts of a mini-conversation because you've shared a previous note doesn't make much sense.

Also, it is odd to me that HTML can be used in a note, but it is disabled if you write your note in the blockquote section. I like the idea of being able to use HTML, but think it is silly that the functionality is lost half of the time.

I am very excited with the direction Google is going and hope they keep following this path.

I like this new feature. Now finally Google is heading to the concept of communication I want to view in the following years.
If we can do a successful mix of mail, chat and rss+sharing... it would be amazing. I'm happy to see someone is doing it.

Thanks for the detailed explanation Tony, which of course brings me to the next question: Are you and Philipp issuing a new ID after updates?
And is there a easy way to find out if a feed I'm subscribed to issuing new IDs?

For me as a basic user this looks like the main advantage between a RSS-Feed and a selfmade script checking a webpage for changes.

> Are you and Philipp issuing a new ID after updates?

No, Google Blogoscoped posts maintain their original ID even after updates are made.

> And is there a easy way to find out if a feed I'm subscribed to
> issuing new IDs?

Hmm. I don't think so. At least not until they make an update and you see an almost identical post coming through. Although you could possibly try comparing the created and updated dates in the feed to see if they always match. If they're issuing a new ID, I would guess that these two dates and times would always be identical. (Of course, they'd also be identical if they never make updates to their published posts...)

I love how FriendFeed pulls in my Google Reader shared notes as though they were native notes in FriendFeed. So many times I've shared things in Google Reader and then had to wait a few minutes before I could add a comment explaining why I'd shared it on FriendFeed (which also didn't get propagated to any of my contacts reading the post in Google Reader instead). Nice.

I don't have a use for it and wish they were working @ more important stuff.

"Your stuff"... and there is "My Account" link at top right corner. Isn't it an inconsistency?

FriendFeed is not really comparable to Google Reader. It doesn't even include the text of feed items, and it only shows items from people who use the service, whereas Google Reader is a way of reading any RSS feed in existence.

It's not true, also, that the subscriptions are opt-in. You get friend-of-a-friend items from people you may never have heard of, and there's no way to filter those out.

The friends question in Google goes back to the way GMail treats contacts, i.e. a contact is a person you sent mail to. That's far too inclusive, especially when they suddenly become your friend in a totally different service.

I don't see what's so awkward about me being able to add a short note to a post I'm sharing. FF allows anyone to comment on something I've posted, so why can't I do the same?

> ... and it only shows items from people who use the service ...

Not if you create an "imaginary friend" for yourself which allows you to add as many feeds as you like.

> You get friend-of-a-friend items from people you may never
> have heard of, and there's no way to filter those out.

As I recently found out, that is actually possible:
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/130770.html#id130777

I like this feature a lot. There's still quite a few sites I go to that don't have RSS feeds (imagine that!), and this is the best way I've yet found to bring share articles from them inside an interface that I (and others) actually USE.

[Moved from "Sharing shared notes in Reader" – Tony]

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This is strange.... don't you guys think?

But if you share with a note then other note is overwritten....

Hmmzz