March 11, 2010

Google Reader now has Play, where you browse interesting articles, photos, videos, etc from the web. You can click "Share" "Like" or "Star" and if anyone is following your profile on Reader, they can find all the things you "Share." It doesn't seem that "Like" or "Star" have any important functions...and the whole Play thing is sort of confusing because following a person on Play is different than subscribing to their blog.

I'm still trying to figure this out but if you go to your Google Reader page near the top left you will see a section called "People You Follow" right under "All Items" which lists all your blog updates. Under "People You Follow" you can look at all your friends "Shared" items, your "Shared" items, add people to follow, etc.

Adding someone to follow is complicated and dumb. You can only add them if they are already one of your gchat/gmail contacts. Which, yes, we get it Google you want to rule the world, starting by destroying Facebook.

Once you jump through the stupid bullshit hoops, Play is ok. Something I really like about it is you can go to one of your subscribed blogs, click on "Feed Settings" and at the very bottom you can view it in Play mode, which allows you to "Share" a blog post you like instead of reposting a link to it on a blog post of your own.

Some of my shared items: video of a jetpack (does anyone else nearly wet their pants with excitement at the possibility of owning one of these in the near future?); a post from Al Mohler on the link between abortion and African-Americans; and super cool engagement photos taken UNDER WATER.

If you, like I, think everything I love is interesting and neat then you can follow me by adding my email to gchat or your gmail contacts. Which is: barry.biceps@gmail.com.