Google Reader announced some new features yesterday, so I thought I’d continue the Google theme of my blog lately by breaking it down for the uninitiated. The idea of an RSS subscription manager, or reader is foreign to most internet users, but it can be very helpful, especially for mothers and estranged friends and family trying to keep up with the blogs of loved ones. What follows is my attempt to de-mystify Google Reader, using more familiar language. Feel free, as always, to leave questions in the comments below, or on Twitter or Facebook.

What is Google Reader?

Google Reader is an RSS-based subscription service and manager. I know, I’ve lost you already. Put more simply, Google Reader is a tool used to put all the blogs you check regularly in one central location. From Wikipedia:

RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication” but sometimes “Rich Site Summary”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

Google Reader takes the “RSS feeds” (or more simply, the constantly updated content) from your favorite blogs or news sites and constantly checks them for updates, so you don’t have to go to little Billy’s model rocket page 5 times a day just to see his latest launch. You just go to your Google Reader and wait for the post to show up.

It’s a lot like having an email account for your blogs. You don’t go to a hundred different sites to get messages from your hundreds of accounts, you go to one email account and let the messages come to you. Why should it be any different with the websites you frequent? Google Reader makes that happen. You go to one place and your websites come to you.

How do I get started?

Getting started is as simple as logging in. Go to the Google Reader homepage here, and either use your existing Google Account to log in, or register for a new one. If you use GMail or any other Google service, you already have an account and you should use that one, for reasons I’ll explain later. After logging in, you’ll be brought to this screen:

Google put some helpful tips in your feed to get you started. Go ahead and read them for a quick overview of what I’m about to talk about. There’s even a video to walk you through some of it. The first thing you’ll want to do is add your favorite websites. Click “Add a Subscription,” then enter in the address of any website. I’ll use this site just as an example. Enter http://www.afrowhitey.com and click “Add.”

You’ll notice “The Mighty AfroWhitey” shows up under the “Subscriptions” tab. Click on it.

Congratulations, you are now reading The Mighty AfroWhitey from your very own Google Reader. You can customize the way you see each feed by clicking on the “Settings” link. I prefer seeing my sites as a list, and using the “Previous Item” and “Next Item” buttons to scroll through them. To do this, click on “List” in the upper-right corner of the blue box. To go back to the old view, click “Expanded.”

As you add more subscriptions, you may prefer to read through all your websites in the order they posted. To do this, click on “All Items” and you’ll see all the posts from all your websites. You can then sort them by oldest or newest by clicking on “View Settings” (“Feed Settings” when in a specific subscription). “Oldest” puts the oldest posts at the top, “Newest” starts with the newest. I prefer to sort by oldest and cycle through the posts using the “Next Item” button.

Now what?

Now you’re pretty much on your own. Add whatever site you want to your reader using the “Add Subscription” button, or you can create a bookmark to add any site you’re viewing that will go in your toolbar. This can be found in the “Goodies” tab of your settings. To find out if a site is subscribable or not, check the address bar. If you see an icon next to the address that looks like a soundwave, you can subscribe and all updates will come to your reader (it’s the icon next to the star in the screenshot below).

I suggest starting with any family or friends’ blogs and moving on to news sites or even, like the New York Times or CNN or BBC, or even ESPN. You can also subscribe to specific columns, like sports or fashion, or specific contributors a lot of the time. I keep track of my movie reviews this way. You can subscribe to Roger Ebert or my personal favorite, Peter Travers. Just look for the icon on any page you’re reading and you’ll know if it’s an option.

Bonus features (A little on the advanced side):

One of the coolest features of Google Reader is the ability to share a post with any of your Google Contacts. This means that if you think your mom will like a post, you can email it to her without even leaving Google Reader. If you look at the bottom of any post in reader, you’ll see a bunch of links: “Add Star,” “Like,” “Share,” “Share with note,” “Email,” “Keep Unread,” and “Add Tags.” “Preview” is only there because I use a program called Better GReader for some added functionality.

“Add Star” is a way of organizing your favorite posts so you can come back to them later. You’ll notice a “Starred Items” link on the left below “All Items.” Clicking this will show you all the posts you’ve starred. You can also search all starred items by using the drop-down menu next to the search button.

“Like” is a new feature. Clicking like in Google Reader works just like it does in Facebook. Anyone who reads that post will see how many people have liked it. You can also see the individual people that liked the post. This is useful when looking for more people that share similar interests to discover more interesting blogs. Just click on the link below the title to see the individuals, then click on a name to see their shares.

“Share” will share the post with any of your Google Reader followers. Your followers are any of your Google Contacts you’ve allowed to see your shares. To choose who sees these, click on “Sharing Settings” under the “People You Follow” tab. You can also “Share with Note” to personalize any of your shares with a little message. My shares can be found here. Go ahead and follow me if you like. I share anything from cool technology, to movie news, to funny videos.

The rest of them are pretty self-explanatory. The most useful of which being “Email.” Click on this and you can email a post to anyone in the world. It will even auto-fill for you if you used your GMail account to login. It’s vey handy for sharing with those who haven’t yet taken the Google Reader plunge.

So there you have it. I hope I’ve de-mystified Google Reader for those who may be weary of joining. As always, leave any questions in the comments, or Twitter, or Facebook. And don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook!

I was looking for Mac-compatible syncing apps for the “How to Sync iTunes on Multiple Computers” post and Russell tipped me off to a great one.

I use the creatively named SyncTwoFolders for syncing on my mac.

I checked it out and it works great. I successfully synced both my iTunes folder and my wife’s (across the network) with my backup folder on an external hard drive. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Download the Program – Go here, click “Download Now,” then select either the “Mac Intel” link , or the “Mac PPC” (Power PC, for older Macs like the Powerbook) link next to the “SyncTwoFolders” icon. After the file downloads, unzip and drag the .app file to your Applications folder.

Step 2: Set Up Your Sync – Open the program and select your “Source” folder and your “Target” folder. For an iTunes sync, the source would be your iTunes music folder on the primary computer and the target will be the secondary computer, whether across the network or on an external hard drive.

Selecting your “Synchronization Mode” can be a bit confusing because of the terms used, so I’ll break them down for you. “Reciprocal” will only look at files that are in both folders, replacing any older file with the newer one. No files will be deleted in this mode. “Source up Target” will do the same thing as “Reciprocal,” but also copy any files from the source file that are not in the target folder (i.e. if you add new songs to your library). No files will be deleted in this mode either. “Source on Target” does the same thing as “Source up Target,” but also deletes any files from the target folder that are no longer found in the source folder (i.e. if you delete any songs from your library).

Select your preferred “Synchronization Mode” (I use “Source on Target” so I have an exact copy) and add any additional filters you want. If you hover over any of the options, a box will appear describing that option. If you want a test run to see what files will be affected without actually moving anything around, click “Simulation.” Click the right-most checkbox to see the log.

Step 3: Run Your Sync – Make sure “Simulation” is unchecked and click “Synchronize.” Then, just sit back and watch your files fly across the magical tubes. Now run to the kitchen sink and pour yourself an ice cold glass of Mother Nature’s life juice, because you just synced two folders.

I muted my sound because it copies each file individually and my computer was chiming non-stop. My only real complaint is that you can’t schedule regular syncs, but for a free app, that’s definitely not a deal-breaker.

This post comes at the request of sn9500, who writes,

“I have a couple of computers and all have iTunes which won’t let me use my Ipod on there without deleting what is on my Ipod, so I only use the Ipod on one computer. So even tho I have downloads on the other computers, I have not known how to add it to my Ipod.”

This is a common problem with iTunes. iPods only allow you to sync to one iTunes library at a time, but what happens if you are adding music on multiple computers? How do you add that music to your iPod?

The quick solution is to enable “Manually manage music” in the iPod preferences and drag the music manually to your iPod. But what if you travel and want to be able to access all your music all the time, whether on your laptop or home computer? What if you have multiple computers like our friend above and don’t want to worry about remembering what computer has what music? This post will attempt to resolve this more complicated scenario.

Step 1: Locate Your iTunes Library and Music – The key to making this work is tricking your iPod into always believing its syncing to the same library, no matter the actual computer or location. To do this, we must first locate the iTunes library on your primary iTunes computer, just as we did to enable multiple users. The easiest way to do this is to look in your iTunes preferences, then click on the advanced tab.

In the window that comes up, you’ll notice a box underneath “iTunes Music folder location.” Take note of this location. This is where both your music and library are located. Navigate to this folder and you should see all of your artists in their respective folders. Your actual library will be in a folder called iTunes, which may be in a separate folder from “iTunes Music,” usually still in your “Music” (Mac) or “My Music” (PC) folder.

Step 2: Sync iTunes Folder Between Computers – This step involves another application. Using a file-syncing application, you will copy both your music folder (and all sub-folders) and your iTunes library file to the other computer(s) you want to use. Make sure to put the folder in the same basic place, or wherever the iTunes music folder is on that computer. Then, using the same application, you will periodically scan all locations for any changes and make those changes on any computers necessary.

Lifehacker recommends SyncToy for PCs on a local network (under the same roof/wireless network). They even have instructions for setting it up here (scroll down the page to find the appropriate section).

For syncing computers across the Internet (i.e. to a work computer), Lifehacker recommends FolderShare. Instructions are at the top of the page here.

Unfortunately, I have yet to find a good free file-syncing program for Mac. If anyone knows of one, please share in the comments. Until then, I recommend installing SyncToy on a PC on the same network as your Mac(s), then using that to sync two network folders (both the source and the source and destination folders will be your individual Macs on the network).

UPDATE (6/3/09): Russell gave me a great Mac-syncing app in the comments. Instructions here.

Step 3: Sync Your iPod and Enjoy – All that’s left is to plug your iPod into any of the computers you just synced and test out your new system. If you get the “iPod will be erased” message, something went wrong. If not, you’re good to go, just remember to sync your folders anytime you download a new song or make a change.

I hope that helps any of you with this problem. I used this method for years to create a usable backup of my Mac’s music to my PC and it works great. As always, if you have any other questions or tips, leave them in the comments below or email me. I make house calls to the Las Vegas area!