In continuing with my social media “hacks” series (RSS, Technorati, blogging and Wikipedia), here are ten of my favorite hacks that work with Bloglines, the most popular RSS news reader.
1) Put Bloglines on Your Blackberry
I don't have a Blackberry, but there are certainly many who do. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could access Bloglines from your device? Well, you can thanks to Berry Bloglines. This free, open source RSS reader is optimized for reading news feeds and blogs on the Blackberry. Even better, Berry Bloglines allows you to read full articles, not just summaries, and even links to external content. Treo, Pocket PC, PSP and mobile phone users don't need a special app to access Bloglines on the go. Bloglines Mobile does it all.
2) Blog Right From Bloglines
Blogger allows you to set up a special email address that you can use to blog via email. Bloglines includes a feature that lets you send articles to others via email. Well, if you combine these you can blog to Blogger from inside Bloglines! Just click the link that says “email this”, enter your special Blogger email address and boom - you're live! Below is a screen grab from a test I ran on Blogger. This may work with TypePad and other services that let you post by email. I haven't tested this hack with these platforms.
3) Sync or Swim
I am a Web kind of guy. Call me crazy, but sometimes prefer to use Web apps rather than run another desktop program. Most people, however, like to run apps - especially when it comes to RSS readers. The good news is that you can sync your feeds between several major RSS readers and Bloglines. This way, whatever you read at work will be marked as read at home and vice versa. Syncing readers include FeedDemon, GreatNews and Onfolio on Windows, Egress on the Pocket PC and NetNewsWire on the Mac. Oh yeah, and you can read your Bloglines feeds in Outlook as well - without Newsgator.
4) Get Bloglines Notifications via IM
Bloglines has a feature that can alert you when a certain feed is updated. There are many different ways to be alerted, including via Firefox, on the Mac OS X Dashboard or even in your Windows Taskbar. However, did you also know you can get pinged with an IM?
5) Get Notified When Pages Without Feeds Change
Don't you hate it when your favorite frequently updating sites don't have RSS feeds? Well, stress no more. M-E-L has developed a hack to track sites in Bloglines using Watch That Page.
6) Tonight on TiVo - It's the Bloglines Channel
Yes, someone has developed a way to read your Bloglines feeds on your TiVo. Wait, it gets worse. You can also read your Bloglines feeds on your iPod if you're a bit more adventurous.
7) Put Bloglines Inside Your Desktop Blogging Tool
In a recent post I praised ecto - a desktop blogging tool. This isn't the only tool out there. In fact, there's a similar app for Windows called Ellicit that you can use to access your Bloglines feeds without having to leave the Entry Editor.
8) Create a Blogroll Using Bloglines
While there' s a lot of debate if they're still relevant anymore, there are many bloggers who like to maintain and publish a blogroll - a list of the blogs they read. This can be a tedious exercise as you add blogs and remove others. If you manage your feeds on Bloglines, then you're done. Follow these instructions to add a list of your feeds to your blog.
9) Add a Feed to Multiple Readers at the Same Time Using Firefox
First, if you're not using Firefox, stop and go download it. Next, install the LiveLines Firefox extension. This tool creates a Firefox Live Bookmark and a Bloglines subscription with one click. You can also simultaneously throw the feed into the Sage RSS reader or even a third party app. that uses the feed:// protocol into the mix too.
10) Post Read Bloglines Items to del.icio.us
One feature that Bloglines is missing is any kind of social tagging. However, you can - if you wanted to - offload your favorite Bloglines items to del.icio.us and tag them. Over time you will get a tag cloud of your reading habits. This advanced hack requires Greasemonkey.
