Not So Relevant

Allen Stern on Center Networks:

Ancient civilizations used the sun to determine what time it is, Apple fanboys use their iPhone. Me, I use Twitter to tell what time it is! That’s right, with their daily outages from nearly exactly 6-7pm Eastern, if it’s down and the sun is up, it’s 6pm.

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while now knows that one of the main topics here is OpenID. Actually it has become a focal point of the blog. I got interested in identity management and OpenID when doing a vanity search on Google almost two years ago. Realizing that there was more than one Carsten Pötter listed in search engine results and that I don’t want to be associated with at least some of them - you don’t want to see your name on an anti-Semitic site, do you? - I tried to aggregate online profiles in one place, building a brand. Also blogging certainly helped being listed more prominently in search results later. One of the first tools I used for aggregation was ClaimID and from there it’s just a small step to OpenID. I was hooked.

OpenID was emerging back then. It was and still is interesting to watch developments being made, see it grow, and gain momentum. I think I have learned a few things about the technology, though I am not a developer. I can’t code and while I am subscribed to the OpenID mailing list, some discussions there are over my head. I don’t have the background to follow them and simply don’t have enough time to gain some deeper knowledge. The only contribution to OpenID I can offer is an end user perspective, blogging and talking about it.

However some people have the false impression I was some kind of expert. That happened more than once already. I am certainly no expert. I am not even sure if everything I write about OpenID is technically correct. But I think information (especially) on new technologies has to be correct. How can people be convinced to adopt a technology if they can’t be sure the information given to them is correct? I can’t offer this guarantee.

So does it still make sense to write about OpenID (the same applies for other technologies like microformats as well)? Currently I am undecided. Today I have seen a post on Mashable associating FriendFeed with the semantic web. It’s nonsense, of course. But am I immune to such articles? I guess, not.

Maybe this is the most stupid article ever written on a blog but I will probably maintain a low profile on OpenID for a couple of weeks. In two weeks there will be a barcamp on identity in Bremen. I registered for it already but I won’t go, I guess. It doesn’t make much sense.

If you have an account on FriendFeed and follow a few people there you could easily get the impression that Google Reader was a must have tool for early adopters and geeks. Its sharing feature - made popular by Robert “I reported first on the China earthquake” Scoble - is used intensely by users. I even know people who chose Google Reader as their favorite feed reader only because of that feature. Maybe they think it’s the only feed reader offering shared items. Well, tools like RSSMeme and ReadBurner as well as lifestreaming applications like Plaxo Pulse and MyBlogLog that support Google Reader out-of-the-box make people certainly think that way. However other feed readers also support sharing of items. I know and work(ed) with Bloglines, Google Reader, and FeedDemon. So let’s see how sharing items works with those readers.

Web based feed reader Bloglines is providing a really easy and intuitive way to share items. First, make sure to make your shared articles - your Bloglines blog - publicly available and give it a more original name than I have for this example.

So next time you see an interesting article in Bloglines just click the Clip/Blog This button at the end of the article and it will be displayed on your fancy Bloglines blog.

It looks really good, doesn’t it? Unfortunately only the headlines of articles are shown, though. Of course, there is also a RSS feed available for it.

I guess, most of you are familiar with Google Reader by now. Sharing articles is as simple as in Bloglines and just like in Bloglines you just have to click the Share or Share with note button below articles. Besides providing a RSS feed Google Reader also provides a well designed page for your shared articles.

I don’t have to write much about FeedDemon’s sharing features because I have covered that in a separate article earlier this month already. Unlike Bloglines and Google Reader there is no separate page available to display articles to non-feed subscribers. I am not really sure if that’s a disadvantage because most people will consume shared items by subscribing to the feed, I guess.

FeedDemon has a feature both Bloglines and Google Reader lack: You don’t have to be a subscriber to a feed to share an article. Simply drag the link from the location bar of your browser to the shared clippings folder in FeedDemon and you’re done. Great feature!

Conclusion

All three feed readers provide great features to share articles. If you want an extra page to display articles to readers, Bloglines and Google Reader are your readers of choice. If you don’t need that FeedDemon is probably the better choice because you can also share articles from blogs and sites you’re not subscribed to.

Other feed readers probably provide similar features. If you know some leave a comment, please.