My new sidebar, or how I integrated Publish2 and Google Reader

You can talk all the smack you want to about link journalism and its related buzzword, curation, but Publish2 is a convenient service. Case in point: The new sidebar on this blog. From now on, it will display 10 links to articles or blog posts I’m reading. All I have to do is save the link to my Publish2 account and tag it (wait for it) “What I’m reading”.

It gets better.

Besides a couple crucial newspapers and links I follow from Twitter, I don’t do much of my reading on the originating websites. Though I’m perpetually behind, Google Reader remains my main portal.

And thanks to this post, I was able to integrate my Publish2 account and public Reader shared items page. Click once, share twice*. You can set it up so Publish imports these shared items automatically or manually, you can add tags, you can add notes. I’m going automatic, but if I were aiming this feed at the publication I work for, I might choose a greater level of control.

No, this tweak won’t save newspapers. And neither will link sharing via services such as Publish2, at least not by itself. But integrating services does save headaches, and it’s worth exploring more ways to apply this technology.

* Or more, depending on how many places I direct my Publish2 and Reader feeds.