Reader 2000

The end is nigh!

Google Reader is going away on July 1. Your subscription data will probably get tossed as part of the purge, so you should import your feeds to R2K before then. It’s pretty simple, just sign up at reader2000.com, then click the “Import from Google Reader” button on the left sidebar, no need to download any OPML files or anything!

Other features you get when you join R2K:

• A return to the era of social sharing on Reader with notes, comments, etc.
• Share from any site on the Internet with the Note in R2K bookmarklet
• Full privacy controls over your shares
• Mobile-optimized site when reading from a phone
• @-mentions, #hashtags, share directly from Instagram, notifications center, search shares, and a bunch of other cool stuff

Just in time for the end of the world (of Reader), you can now import your feeds and folders from Google Reader to R2K. Click the “Import from Google Reader” button in the sidebar to get started, no need to download any files or anything!

This means there are 2 basic ways to share things on R2K:

1. Via the Note in R2K bookmarklet: highlight something on any webpage, click the bookmarklet, add a note, and you’re done!
2. Directly from RSS. If you want to share only part of an RSS post, you can highlight a portion of the post before clicking the share button, and then your share will contain only the portion you highlighted

shift + s is the keyboard shortcut to share an RSS post; use shift + n to share with note

There are currently 3 ways to find friends from other networks on R2K, check them out by clicking “Find Your Friends” in the sidebar

1. Twitter
2. Instagram
3. Former Google Reader sharing friends. Remember sharing? When you import your Google Reader data, you’ll be able to find your Google Reader friends who have imported their feeds to R2K

You can also search for more R2K users by name here

There are several ways to control your privacy on R2K, all can be adjusted from the Privacy Settings menu

1. Make private shares. Private shares are only visible to people who you have put on your approved ‘private access’ list, and private shares cannot be reshared. You can set your account so that shares are private by default, or you can choose public or private on a per-share basis
2. Only allow comments on your shares from people you follow. That way anyone can see your public shares, but only people you follow will be able to comment
3. Ignore individual users. When you ignore a user, that user can’t comment on your shares, and you won’t even see comments from that user on other people’s shares. You can find the ‘ignore’ button on the privacy settings page, or on a user’s profile page

1. The Note in R2K bookmarklet is now integrated with Feedly. If you want to share an RSS post from Feedly, click the R2K bookmarklet and the contents of your share will be whatever post you’re reading. The click-thru will even go to the original source, and you can highlight a portion of the post if you want to share an excerpt
2. Integrated RSS directly in R2K. Add feeds, share with keyboard shortcuts, etc etc

Check out http://www.reader2000.com/awards to register and get your ballot!

R2K will now prompt you before displaying images in comments from people you don’t trust:

By default your trusted list includes the people you follow, but check out the privacy settings page if you want to change the default behavior (i.e. you always want to be prompted before displaying images in comments)

Check out http://www.reader2000.com/instagram to link up your Instagram account with R2K!

How does R2K/Instagram “instagration” work?

• Your Instagram photos will be shared to R2K automatically
• Your comments and likes will travel across platforms! That’s right, if you like a photo on Instagram, the like will appear on R2K, and vice versa!
• You can opt out of sharing an Instagram photo on R2K by tagging it #noshare on Instagram, or you can set up your R2K account to share only Instagram photos explicitly tagged #share
• Instagram shares default to the more private of your R2K and Instagram account settings, so if your R2K account OR your Instagram account is private, your Instagram shares will default to private on R2K. You can also choose to make Instagram shares always public or private
• @mentions convert across platforms, just use the nickname of the user on the platform you’re commenting from!

Also, the R2K Instagram bot will automatically share any public Instagram photos tagged #r2k!

Now you can sign up for R2K with your twitter account, so you’ll be able to find your twitter friends who are sharing on R2K!

It’s much easier for new users to sign up this way, but even if you’re an existing user it’s helpful to associate your twitter account because a) your twitter friends will be able to find you on R2K when they sign up, and b) you can login with twitter, so that’s one less password to remember. And of course, we’ll never tweet on your behalf without your permission

Check it out at www.reader2000.com/connect

TL;DR: your nickname can’t have spaces/characters anymore, and you can @mention someone by nickname

Effective immediately the nickname/full name conventions have changed:

• Nicknames are used for login and user URLs
• Full names are displayed in comments/shares/etc, and do not have to be unique
• Nicknames can contain only letters, numbers, and _, and have a maximum length of 20 characters
• If your old nickname was non-compliant, it has been modified to something that is, but for the time being you can still login with your old nickname

Now you can @mention people with their (case insensitive) nicknames! Shares in which you’re @mentioned will be highlighted, and will appear in your activity stream

There’s a new privacy option that says “only allow comments on my shares from people I follow.” Find it on the privacy settings page

Here are some keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate R2K:

• j = open next share
• k = open previous share
• l = like opened share
• v = save opened share
• s = reshare opened share
• c = scroll to top of comments section of opened share
• x = expand and scroll to bottom of comments section
• o = open share url in a new tab (“click thru”)

Check out reader2000.com/shares/search for our new search interface!

The default operator is AND, meaning that a search for tiger woods will return shares that contain both of the words tiger and woods. If your search query is tiger OR woods then you will shares that contain at least one of the words, and if you search “tiger woods” with quotes then you’ll only see shares that have the exact phrase

Search results are limited to people you follow, and obey the same privacy rules as when you read shares: you can only search private shares from users who have specifically given you private access, and you can’t search any shares from people who have blocked you

Save shares for later by checking the box that says ‘Save for later’.  Also works with the keyboard shortcut ‘v’.

Access your saved shares from the ‘Shares you’ve saved’ link on the sidebar. You can also see the shares you’ve liked.

You can now reshare public shares! Click the reshare button, or use the keyboard shortcut ‘s’

Starting today, you can make private shares on Reader2000!  What’s a private share you ask?  Pretty simple: you create and maintain a list of your trusted friends, and only those people on your pre-approved list will be able to see your private shares. For example, a new follower who is not on your pre-approved list will only be able to see your public shares.

You can set a share to be private at the time of share by marking the “private” check box on the share form. You can also go back through your old shares to toggle an individual share’s public/private status.

Check out http://www.reader2000.com/users/privacy to grant your friends access to your private shares (the link is available from “Your shared items” page).  You can also grant private access by mousing over usernames in shares/likes/comments.

Shares that you’ve made on Reader2000 before now will default to ‘public’, but again you can go back and mark individual shares as ‘private’ by clicking the toggle

All shares that were imported from the old Google Reader (and any GReader shares we import in the future) will default to ‘private.’  Additionally, when we release the reshare feature, only public shares will be reshareable.

Now you can use the Note in R2K bookmarklet to share posts directly from Google Reader to Reader2000!  From within Google Reader, simply click the “Note in R2K” bookmarklet to share the current item in Reader2000.  

If you don’t highlight anything, we’ll share the entire post.  You can still highlight a portion of the post if you just want to share an excerpt.

A multi-use bookmarklet, Note in R2K

• Highlight a portion of the page, click the bookmarklet, and the portion that you highlighted will be the body of your share
• If you don’t highlight anything, we’ll share the entire page, but with the junk stripped out
• Special cases for YouTube, Vimeo, and other multimedia sites allow you to share the relevant video/audio without highlighting anything
• Special case when the page is a single image: no need to highlight anything!

Create your own share from scratch by clicking the “share from right here” link

Follow people by clicking “edit” next to “People you follow”, then finding your friends (we know this will be a hassle as the list gets longer; don’t worry, we’re going to fix it!)

Google Reader’s Regular View or Comment View

Our markdown language lets you format your shares/notes/comments, including embedding images and videos by simply pasting the URLs

Likes for both shares and comments

If you can’t find your bookmarks bar, try going to your browser’s “View” menu and looking for either “Show bookmarks bar”, or a “Toolbars” submenu that has something similar

The YouTube Chrome app has a bug that prevents any bookmarklet from working, not just R2K.  Try uninstalling the app from Chrome.  Open a new tab, right click the YouTube “app”, then click “Remove from Chrome”

Glad you asked, we have big plans for many important features!  Here are a few of the most immediate priorities:

Manage your RSS feeds, and share directly from RSS

Enhanced privacy settings, so you can control who follows you

Keep track of read/unread items - UPDATE: now keeping track of your read/unread

Better profile pages

Keyboard shortcuts - UPDATE: implemented j / k / l keyboard shortcuts!