One (arguably) important function of Twitter is the use of “RT”, or “ReTweet”, in your posts. If you’ve read my treatise on how to use Google Reader, you know that I use GReader to keep updated on the Twitter-ers that I think are most important. Read my article for full information, but the short version is to just paste a person’s twitter URL (for instance “http://twitter.com/jjphoto“) into the “Add Subscription” box, and it will take care of itself.

Now, if I read an interesting post and want to retweet it, I have to copy the tweet text in GReader, open a new window, go to twitter.com/home, paste in the text, add “RT” and “@” to the front, and then hit update. I know, that’s not really TOO tedious, but I want it faster.

Google recently added “Send To” links to GReader, which you can enable in your “Settings” page (again, see my previous post on that), and they will easily allow you to post to Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Reddit, etc. The Evernote integration is not there by default, email me if you want to know how it works. However, I want an easy way to retweet a twitter status that I am reading in GReader, so I decided to fix it myself.

If you navigate back to the “Send To” options in the “Settings” page, you’ll see a link that says “Create a Custom Link.” If you click that, you get three fields to fill out. If you use this information, you’re done!

Name: Twitter RT
URL: http://twitter.com/home/?status=RT @${title}
Icon URL: http://jesseandjanie.com/TwitterRT.ico

Now, when you return to GReader, you’ll see a new option under “Send To” – if you choose Twitter RT, it will open a new tab, take you to Twitter, and fill in your status box with all of the information that you need!

It’s not a complicated bit of code, but it works! Do me a favor, if you use my trick, drop me a mention on Twitter, and I’ll see you there!

I wrote up a how-to on Google reader for my Facebook friends, and wanted to share it – so here you go:

OK, so who uses Google Reader? If you already use it, just see the links at the bottom of this note. If you DON’T use Google Reader and/or don’t know what it is or why you’d use it, read on!

Google Reader is a “news aggregator” – meaning that it collects information from many locations and presents it to you in one central spot. Now, if you’re the kind of person who likes to read several web sites every day (or a few times each week), Google Reader can help you do that more efficiently and cleanly.

Just about any site that creates new content on a regular basis (like a blog or news site) will have an RSS feed, which you can “subscribe” to in Google Reader. Once you’ve subscribed to a few sites, you can just check in with Google Reader every day or two, and it will have updated itself with all of the new posts on that site! That means that you can read them in a stripped-down fashion (with most of the site formatting and extra graphics removed).

The other bonuses attached to subscribing to the sites you love with Google Reader are the ability to search through posts, and the relatively permanent archiving of the site information. You can run a search in Reader to pull up any posts you’ve read in the past, and if the site ever goes away, you have an archive of the information. You can use this archiving to subscribe to your OWN blog, and keep it automatically backed up that way!

Now, not all RSS feeds are created equal. Some sites just don’t get it, and all they post is a headline and one line of text, forcing you to click through to the full site for the whole story. I can’t stand a feed that does this, and won’t subscribe to it – and certainly won’t go to their site every day for information. It’s perfectly possible for a site to insert unobtrusive ads into their RSS feed (several of my favorite sites do it), and I’d MUCH rather have ad-supported full feeds than stripped-down mini-feeds.

So, how do you use it? I’ll help you get started:

Sign up for a Google Account
If you don’t have a google account, go here and sign up for one. It’s quick and free.

Start finding sites to add
Now, it’s time to add some content, people! What are you interested in? Technology? Food? World News? Pick a site that you love (let’s use LifeHacker as an example), and load it up in your browser. Look around for the RSS logo:

If you’re in Firefox, you’ll see it up in the address bar. You’ll also usually find it in the sidebar menu or footer of a given site (it’s on the left-hand side of LifeHacker.com).

At this point, there are a couple of ways to go. If you right click on the icon and choose “copy link location” and head back to Google Reader, you’ll see a button near the top left that says “Add a Subscription.” Click that button and paste in your link and submit it – congrats, you’ve added your first site!

Alternatively to the process outlined above, you can often click on the RSS icon itself, and you will be presented with options including “add to Google Reader.” Firefox is very handy with that process (and we’ll make it even more handy in a few minutes.

If you’re looking for sites to add, I have some Feed Bundles that I’ve created to get you started. Just click on these links and you’ll get a good influx of new sites to check out:

• Jesse’s Tech Feeds – great technology sites, including iPhone sites.
• Jesse’s Food Feeds – great recipes and information on healthy eating.
• Jesse’s Photo Feeds – great sites on photography and the business of photography
• Jesse’s Home Feeds – sites to help keep your home organized and keep you an informed consumer.
• Jesse’s Fun Feeds – sites to keep you entertained!

Tweak your settings
Now that you’re up and running in Google Reader, you need to tweak your settings to get the most out of it.

• First off, if you’re using Firefox, you need to install the Better GReader add-on. Just click the link and install it.
• Once Better Greader is installed, open up its options (Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions -> Better Greader -> Options), make sure “Preview Item” “Show Feed Favicons” and “Show unread count in Favicon” are all checked on the “General” tab, choose “Minimalistic” on the “Skins” tab, make sure “Auto Add” and “Smart Subscribe” are checked on the “Subscribing” tab, and make sure “Hide X people liked this” is checked on the “View” tab. Hit OK to everything to close it all.
• Now, when you reload Reader, you’ll see that you have a LOT more room to read. Hit the “W” key on your keyboard to toggle a good bit of the UI on and off. Sometimes, the page gets confused when you “maximize” the UI, but if you click on a feed to reload it, it will all clear up.
• On the left-hand side, click a feed to pull it up, and make sure that you have “Show: new items” and “Show: Expanded” chosen on the top part of the screen (remember to use “W” to see all of the UI).
• On the left, click the minus sign next to “Home” to minimize a big chunk of menu, and do the same next to “People you Follow.”
• Still on the left, click the down-arrow (next to the minus) next to “Subscriptions” and click on “Show Updated.” This way you’ll only see the feeds that have new items to be read, which keeps things clean and lets you know where to look next.

Have fun!
Start reading! Here’s some tips:

• You should “tag” your feeds to keep them in folders. I have folders for “fun” “home” “tech” “photo”, etc.
• You can use “J” to move forward an item or “K” to move back. That lets you navigate through an entire stream of articles with just the keyboard!
• At the bottom of each article is a menu full of helpful icons.
• You can click the “star” icon to add articles to a special list that you can come back to later for reference (although searching is almost always easier than navigating the star list).
• You can click on “Share” to add the article to a list of articles that your friends can see (same with “Share with note”)
• The Email icon lets you send an article directly to someone with a note attached.
• If you go into “Settings” (on the top right) you can do lots of helpful things, like managing subscriptions in bulk (you can delete them, add them to folders, etc).
• On the same “Settings” page, click on “Send To” and choose FaceBook and Twitter (at least, pick others if you like), and then go back to reading articles. When you see an article you want to share with friends, find the “Send To” at the bottom, click it, and choose one of those. It will post a link to Facebook or Twitter for you!
• If you want to keep up-to-date on the articles that I am into, check out my Google Shared Items page. It should give you a link to “follow” me – and then you’ll always know what I’m sharing!

I hope that all of this information helps you understand Google Reader a bit better. If you have questions, ask away! And just to recap the links to my Feed Bundles for those who skipped to the end:

• Jesse’s Tech Feeds – great technology sites, including iPhone sites.
• Jesse’s Food Feeds – great recipes and information on healthy eating.
• Jesse’s Photo Feeds – great sites on photography and the business of photography
• Jesse’s Home Feeds – sites to help keep your home organized and keep you an informed consumer.
• Jesse’s Fun Feeds – sites to keep you entertained!

EDIT: So, I thought of some more tips on how I use Google Reader.

• You can add a CraigsList search as a feed, so if there something (or multiple things – I keep a search for Nikon) that you regularly search for on CraigsList, you can keep the results up-to-date in front of you! Just go to Craigslist, do a search, and then when viewing the results, look either in the address bar, or at the bottom of the page (where it will say RSS in orange). Copy that link, and add it as outlined above. Then, make a “CL” tag to keep all of your CraigsList searches separate.
• Reader can help you stay on top of Twitter, too! If you have a few people whose updates you REALLY don’t want to miss, just paste their profile link (for instance http://www.twitter.com/jjphoto) into the Reader “Add Subscription” box, and hit submit! I keep a “Twitter” folder with about 10 people’s updates going at all times.
• I’m sure I’ll think of more!

UPDATE: I’ve posted a new tip on how to create a Google Reader “Send to Twitter as RT” widget. Go check it out!