All Things Techy

Erin, in response to my complaint about Google Share's disappearance, mentioned Diigo as a reasonable alternative.  I signed up and like it, though it took me a while to figure out how to make it work.   There are more steps than there were to marking "Share" on my Google Reader, but only a couple more

 One added benefit is you can use it for any website you visit, not just blogs, so it's helping me keep track of all the places I visit and want to remember for later.    That's really nice.  I used to have to paste them in a private blog or else clutter my browser with all kinds of bookmarks that were hard to organize.   Diigo lets you add tags and use them to filter for what you are looking for.

 I put an experimental "shared item" type feature down on the bottom of our TUAR sidebar just to see how it will work.   You can direct the widget by tag.   So when I want a bookmark to show up here I just include "TUAR" as one of the tags.     This customizing option gives it a slight edge over Google Share to me, enough to make up a little for the slight loss of convenience.

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While I was trying to figure out how to manage the shared item feature with Diigo I found this post by Melissa Wiley that mentioned Feedly as an easy way to read and share posts.   So I signed up for that, too.  It turns out you can subscribe to Feedly using your Google account, so all your blog subscriptions show up there without you having to import or manually add them.

I guess some people don't like the magazine format of Feedly, but I seem to be all right with it, even though I usually get overwhelmed with visually busy things.   For example, I can hardly go on Pinterest because it's so visually overwhelming.  Feedly's interface works for me better though, and for some reason the magazine format seems suited to the blog reading experience.  I had a lot of fun browsing there, unlike the feeling of dread I've been experiencing when approaching my overstuffed Google Reader which I haven't kept up with for several months.

One more thing!  I was working on homeschool planning and started wondering if there was an easy way for people to download posts as PDF documents.  Turns out there is in fact a widget which lets you email posts as PDFs.  I put it down at the bottom of our sidebar, too.   It isn't perfect but I think it is kind of a neat idea and maybe over time the idea will be upgraded.   I can think of various ways to use it.

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What is this post about?  Nothing really!   It's just pure geekiness.   You should be glad I haven't cornered you at a party, though when I'm really at a party I have enough sense to let other people do most of the talking.  And it looks so strange to be talking about geeky social media features under our vintage header.    So much for bookshelves and rocking chairs!  But I do second Erin's rec of Diigo and I think Feedly's a win for me right now.   Thank you Erin and Melissa.   And I still do read books and sit on rocking chairs.

Since this post is so much about the internet, has anyone found a replacement for Picnik?   Aidan will especially mourn the pencil sketch editing feature which allowed him to have adventures making photos into coloring pages.   I found this Photo Pencil Sketch app but haven't tried it yet.  Next time Aidan finds an SUV he wants to color, I will give it a shot.

Anyone want to share an internet app they really find useful for homeschool and/or blogging?