Powering Down Google Reader

I wanted to post something brief to let you know I made a few small but (I think) useful additions to this site.

First, I’ve added a button to the bottom of all posts letting Twitter users reply or ask questions directly from the post. Thanks to the purveyor of kaos.am for unknowingly alerting me to this classy and subtle way to allow some direct communication without resorting to comments. Find more info on my no-comments policy here.

Second, all of my article posts now include a “Read Later” button that will send that post to your Instapaper account. If you don’t have an Instapaper account, you should consider getting one. It’s not free, but it’s worth paying for the knowledge that it won’t “pivot” or become ad-ridden sometime down the road. Instapaper also innovates frequently, doing things like Kindle integration and fonts for vision-impaired readers before anyone else.

Third, I’ve added some more feed options to the site. The original Tumblr feed is still available. However, you can now choose between a master feed including all updates, a links-only feed that only includes the links I share (updated at least once a day), or an articles-only feed that includes only longer articles (updated at least once a week). Find more information here.

That’s it. I hope you find at least one of these additions useful. I don’t plan to add to this site very often, as part of the goal in building it was to keep it clean and content-focused.

I used Yahoo Pipes to make a feed that unites all posts by Temple profs writing at their various law blogs. The feed still needs some work, specifically to ensure that the author name, and preferably the name of the blog at which they’re writing, is published in every entry. But overall I’m very happy with it.

I didn’t get permission from them or from their respective blogs, but since the stuff is posted publicly, all the content in my united feed is available freely in each separate feed, and all the entries in my united feed link directly out to the source posts, I don’t see why anyone would object.

But, of course, if anyone does object, I’ll remove them from the feed immediately. In fact, at any point in time, and without warning, I may need to delete the feed altogether, so consider yourselves warned.

For now, though, it’s a convenient way to follow what interests Temple Law professors on a day-to-day basis, particularly with regard to current events in their respective areas of expertise.

So, here’s the feed, and here’s the Yahoo Pipes URL so you can see how I did it.