Sharing Button Clutter and a Non-Solution

June 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I think we’ve reached the saturation point for sharing buttons that we’re supposed to embed on our websites.

  • Twitter “Tweet This”
  • Facebook “Like”
  • Facebook “Share”
  • Google “+1″
  • Delicious “Add”
  • Pinboard “Add”
  • StumbleUpon “Submit”

And those are just the big ones.

Enough is Enough

It’s not realistic that every web publisher is going to add a new button each time the new social network de jour enters the fray. It’s similarly absurd to expect that users are going to hunt through a dozen icons to find the button they want to press. I’m not the first to notice this.

The Problem with Simplification

Some users (such as myself) have a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Google, Pinboard, and a variety of other networks. Others may spend most of their time on one site.

My first thought about how to solve this issue involved some sort of centralized button service. Much like Gravatar provides a global avatar, this service could serve a single button that would post to a user’s social network(s) of choice. The idea has a fatal flaw in that users don’t always want to share in the same way. Depending on a particular article, I might want to share it with my Twitter followers, or on Facebook, or perhaps I simply want it saved to Pinboard (perhaps to end up in one of my other people say compilations).

Darn, that sounded like a good idea.

So what’s the solution? Services such as AddThis make it easy to add the buttons as they arrive, but it doesn’t solve the clutter issue, or the fact that users must make multiple moves if they want an article in more than one place.

We need some sort of magic button. I don’t have a solution, but the current situation is messy.

If you liked this article, please press some buttons! (grr)

Filed Under: Blogging, Rants, Social Media ·

Reeder for Mac: If You Use RSS, Get This App Now

June 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Some months ago, I heard that there was a version of Reeder (my iOS RSS app of choice) being developed for OS X. I didn’t think too much of it, assuming that good mobile UI wouldn’t translate well to good desktop UI. Besides, I can plow through a lot of feeds1 really quickly in Google Reader in my browser.

Last night I bought Reeder via the Mac App Store (app store link – $9.99). Wow. It’s really damn good.

UI

As expected, the UI is beautiful. You can choose from a couple different general views, one of which resembles a view similar to iTunes, Mail.app, etc. and the other is more like the Reeder’s look and feel on the iPad. With either view you have the ability to customize the color tones, textures, font opacity, and so on.

Keyboard Accessibility

One thing that would be critical as to whether I became a Reeder user was the level of keyboard shortcut integration. I plow through feeds at a rapid pace, my hand quickly using the keyboard to move through items, marking them as read (either automatically or manually), opening some items into a browser, and moving between my feed categories. Reeder doesn’t disappoint. It ships with single-key keyboard shortcuts for all imaginable uses including feed navigation, read/unread status, and navigation within the app. Here’s a screenshot of the default keyboard shortcuts – all of these can be changed if desired:

Reeder Shortcuts

Integration With Other Services

Another key workflow piece (and one for which Google Reader is less than ideal) is services integration. Reeder ships with quite a few services offered:

Reeder Services

For me, three are key. I use Instapaper to push long articles for later reading (usually on my iPad). Pinboard is my bookmarking service and how I queue links for my other people say posts. I also have the Twitter integration enabled so I can share interesting finds with my followers. Note that you can enable a custom keyboard shortcut for any of the services. This again allows me to quickly move through items without reaching for the trackball.

It’s a new Primary App

Reeder now has a global hotkey2 and after just a few hours is now part of my information workflow. I’ll have to see how I feel after a few weeks but at this point I can see myself moving all of my RSS consumption to Reeder apps either on my Mac, iPad, or iPhone.

  1. Google tells me I’m currently subscribed to 624 feeds ↩

  2. Thanks Alfred http://www.alfredapp.com ↩

Filed Under: Blogging, Feeds, Social Media · Tagged With: , , , ,

Using OmniFocus to Wrangle Mass WordPress Upgrades

May 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

For those of us who might have, um, a few blogs, the process of installing WordPress updates is one that can involve a few steps. Thankfully the upgrade process is pretty darned easy, but if one has a few active blogs as well as a few that are inactive but still remain online*, it’s not too hard to accidentally overlook one when there’s a security patch.

Yesterday (when another update was released) I realized a too-simple way to keep track of it: setup a template project in OmniFocus that contains a list of each of my WordPress sites, put it on hold, and then whenever there’s an update, duplicate that project, make it active, and work through the list.

OmniFocus project for updating WordPress

* Yes, even old blogs need to be patched. Those who will exploit security vulnerabilities don’t care whether you write on a site anymore.

Filed Under: Blogging, Productivity · Tagged With: , ,

My Fantasy iOS Blogging Client

May 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Blogging from the iPad is a pain for me. The current set of tools might work fine for someone who simply wants to create very basic posts without integration with any other apps, but as a power user I find myself yearning for better tools.

I’m not the only one.

Yesterday Shawn Blanc noted that:

There is one glaring hole of an app that would make my professional life
much easier: MarsEdit for iOS. Or something like it.

In response, Ben Brooks offered a better bookmarklet to improve link posts, but I’m seeking something deeper. **Here’s what I’d like to see in a dream blogging client on my iPad**:

  • The ability to pull in URL, title, and selected text for link posts – this is what Ben built with his bookmarklet.
  • TextExpander support.
  • Markdown preview support. If it could pull in custom css that would be even better.
  • While I’m dreaming, I’d like an integrated SmugMug browser since that’s my photo gallery of choice.

Shawn notes that his set of needs are “narrow and specific” and I’m also aware that what I want probably won’t appeal to the masses.

As I look over that list, maybe I just need XMLRPC publishing support built into the otherwise-excellent Elements (iTunes).

Filed Under: Blogging, iOS · Tagged With: , , , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »