by Sam Harrelson

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Google Reader Exhausted Gestures After Week 1

This past week was my first full week back teaching. I had an incredible week but my Google Reader stats definitely suffered!

I’ve been playing around with Fever, but I love Google Reader’s integration into my GMail and Google personal cloud that is already data-rich. So maybe I need to look into a service like AideRSS which ties into that existing gesture bank.

I could also slim down on feeds, but I’ve already cut them from a high of about 400 and it’s hard to get good aggregation from Twitter or other info brokers on some of the very niche topics I follow. 

Decisions, decisions…

MH's Early BDay Present is a Bouncy Hit!

Picked this up in Anderson, SC on the way to Alabama (ah, the wonders of Craigslist)…

Sent from my iPhone

New Facebook on the iPhone is Fantastic

Headed to Birmingham, AL to see friends. Thought this convenience store outside of Atlanta had the greatest name ever. Passing the passenger aide time with Facebook3.0 on the iPhone and it is a great iteration of the platform.

Sent from my iPhone

WANT!

Have this I must.

Mark Cuban says "The Internet is about to change."

The internet has been dead and boring for a while now.  It has reached a point of stability where flashes  of technological creativity are rare, but  every now and then some new technology can put a spark back in the ole gal (no sexism intended).

If you haven’t heard of WebHooks or PubSubHubBub its about time you did. Both are designed to  simplify and optimize the web.

I love his points, but I think he’s completely overlooked the fact that mobile is the new web.

The Science of Google Wave

What is Google Wave, and how might scientists use it?

It is a communication tool that is essentially e-mail crossed with an instant messenger. You can think of each ‘wave’ or e-mail thread as a flexible document, which allows collaborators to chat and edit the same version in real time. You can also easily drop rich media such as sound files, charts and videos into the document. So Google Wave could be used for collaborative authoring, to speed up writing papers and grant applications, for example.

I simply cannot wait until my 8th graders get a hold of Google Wave.

Student behavior on the blog vs our Facebook page has been fascinating to observe so far.

I see Wave as a middle ground that they will be much more comfortable with in terms of interaction.

To paraphrase Dylan, “The Paradigms are a shiftin’…”

Did Google Docs Get a New iPhone Icon??

Hadn’t seen this till just now…

Sent from my iPhone

Interesting That You Get a Whole New Google Apps Account (25 gigs) With Wave

Not that I’m complaining since this is a developer release and all, but it is still interesting that your Wave account is so seperate from your main Google Account…

I wonder what the rollover process will be when Wave starts opening to the public on September 30?

Google Wave Screenshots

Here are a few shots I’ve collected from kicking the Google Wave… ugh… tires? Interestingly enough, I can just drag-n-drop the pics straight onto a wave and then post straight to Posterous with the posterous robot. Fantastic.

Maps, Docs and Pics are incredibly easy to insert and edit (neato map tagging features that would be helpful if you’re in a discussion about a place or meet-up):

Tweety Robot:

OAuth Integration with Twitter:

Full Twitter Stream:

If I were a news reporter, this would be killer.

I can’t wait to see how Wave plays out when it is released to more folks.

Update: Well, the image attachment didn’t work from the Posterous Robot over to Posterous… hmm…
Just Installed Fever on My Server for Feed Catching

Your current feed reader is full of unread items. You’re hesitant to subscribe to any more feeds because you can’t keep up with your existing subs. Maybe you’ve even abandoned feeds altogether.

Fever takes the temperature of your slice of the web and shows you what’s hot.

I love Google Reader (now). I was tepid in my response to Reader when I first started using it three or so years ago… and for good reason… it was clunky and janky as anything Google has ever put out.

There are still remnants of that bygone era, but I’m a fan of Reader’s interface now. However, I’m always on the lookout for enhancements to my feed reading (since I have less and less time to spend sorting through the 200-400 (depending on my selectivity that month) feeds that I subscribe to).

I’ve heard a great deal about Fever, so I decided to give it a spin.

So far, I’m not sure if I’m sold since there is a social nature to Google Reader that I do enjoy. However, Fever gives the opportunity to quickly zoom through feeds and catch up with what’s important based on what others are saying that are in your network.

However, Fever isn’t just another feedcatcher app… you have to do a little trickery with your own server involving mysql databases since this is an app you host on your own server (rather than a “web app” like GMail or Twitter or Google Reader).

I’ll send over screenshots and thoughts as I play more with Fever tonight.

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